The Pediatric Community Advocacy Program (PCAP) is a virtual outreach program for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) high school students in Boston. It was created to build interest in the field of pediatrics, develop advocacy skills and empower youth to tackle current child health issues in their communities. The main objective is to expose high school students to different avenues of advocacy, as a physician, community representative, entrepreneur, and more. At the start of the program, students will be challenged to collaborate on a solution to a real-time, pediatric health challenge in the Boston area. Students will work in groups, alongside medical student mentors from Harvard Medical School and physician mentors from Boston Children’s Hospital and Boston Medical Center, to propose a unique solution to this challenge.

PCAP will consist of four-weekend sessions from February – to March, with three workshop sessions, and one final session for student presentations. The workshop sessions will be centered around themes of (1.) Public Health Education (2.) Legislative/ Public Policy and (3.) Innovation & Entrepreneurship will be led by experts in these fields. Following the workshop, student teams will meet independently and with their mentors to work on their projects and will be encouraged to incorporate principles from the workshops to aid in developing their solutions and presentations. The final activity is a “Pediatric Advocacy Summit” in which the teams will present their advocacy solution and a winner will be selected based on content, creativity, presentation, and feasibility of the proposal.

Program dates:

Session 1: March 5th Session

Session 2: March 12th Session

Session 3: March 19th

Final Presentations: April 2nd

Application Due Date: Sunday, February 20th at 11:59 PM

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