Twenty Shaker Heights High School students meet every Wednesday after school to participate in the University Hospitals Health Scholars Program, an initiative designed to engage more students from underrepresented populations in careers in medicine. Each week, the students perform research projects and experiments, listen to presentations by medical school students and learn more about careers in the medical field. The program culminates in student-led group projects.
“It’s been really helpful for students who may not see themselves on the medical school trajectory to learn that medicine isn’t that intimidating,” says High School Advisor and School Counselor David Peake. “It’s the classic example of kids not knowing what they don’t know until you show them.”
Sophomores Rohini Kumar and Aria Zai say the program inspired them to learn more about the healing power of music therapy. Both students play instruments—Rohini plays the piano and Aria plays the violin—and say that music has impacted their lives so much. Rohini, who volunteered as a pianist at the Seidman Cancer Center last year, says she saw first-hand the effect of music on patients. So Rohini and Aria, joined by additional sophomore Shay McDermott, decided to build a website called Remedy Rhythms to help raise money for the UH Music Therapy Program. Aria, who is interested in psychology says she’s learned a lot about the power of music therapy. “It’s especially significant in Ohio because of the opioid epidemic,” she explains. “Music is one of the top non-pharmalogical tactics to use in treatment.”
Rohini says her experience as a UH Health Scholar both during the school year and in the hospital’s five-week summer Health Scholars program has been entirely positive. “We do a lot of shadowing in the summer program and they have doctors in different fields who talk to us about work-life balance. They really help you to be a good student and good leader,” Rohini says. But the biggest takeaway from the experience for Rohini is that it’s confirmed for her that she wants to be an emergency physician.