Advocate Health, Spelman College Offer Students Health Care Mentorship and Career Exploration Opportunities

As the health care industry faces a growing shortage of health care workers, Advocate Health, based in North Carolina, and Spelman College in Atlanta are collaborating to introduce more students to a range of critical health care careers.

During the past two years, Advocate Health, the nation’s third-largest nonprofit health system has teamed up with Spelman, a historically Black women’s college, to connect students who aspire to work in medicine with mentorship and career discernment opportunities.

Aligned with Advocate Health’s pledge to build a next-generation workforce, the Health Careers Mentor Program aims to build a more robust workforce pipeline to better serve the varied and complex needs of its nearly 6 million patients.  

“We are proud to partner with Spelman College and build on its legacy of empowering future African American leaders, midwives, advanced clinicians and nurses,” said Dayla Randolph, senior vice president of talent and culture at Advocate Health. “This program is a strategic investment in the next generation of talent and leadership that will transform the quality and accessibility of care for our patients and communities.”

Among the mentorship program’s notable successes:

• 100 percent of first-year mentees are on target to graduate in May 2024.
• 100 percent of those mentees completed research projects.
• 60 percent of those mentees have been accepted into early assurance/acceptance programs at the nation’s top medical and nursing schools.
• One mentee completed a summer internship at Advocate Health’s Midwest research institute.

In March, a group of eight Spelman College students pursuing health science degrees, with medical and nursing school aspirations, participated in an immersion day at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center in Chicago. Students took part in hands-on patient care simulations and gained career advice from hospital, physician and nurse leaders representing a range of operational and clinical disciplines.

Additionally, Advocate Health mentors visit Spelman’s campus throughout the academic year to meet with mentees and participate in Spelman’s health fair, Georgia Dwelle Networking Reception and Health Professions Conference, as well as the Atlanta University Center Health Professions Recruitment Fair.

Spelman College is committed to achieving health equity in the face of many national and international societal changes, said Dr. Rosalind Gregory-Bass, associate professor and director of the health careers program at Spelman College.

“We are an institution focused on developing 21st-century leaders in health care. Our partnership with Advocate Health allows us to meet this goal and align with an organization that is also passionate about culturally competent, data-driven care for some of the nation’s most underserved populations,” said Gregory-Bass.