Leaders and Adolescents Uniting to Navigate Careers in Healthcare (LAUNCH) Augusta Inc. assembled a sizable cohort of local students, Saturday morning, to explore various healthcare roles for the eighth time at its annual LAUNCH Camp.
LAUNCH is a volunteer-based nonprofit dedicated to mentoring children throughout the CSRA about careers in the healthcare field. Its yearly summer camp is one of several initiatives to provide a student pipeline to wellness professions, such as its afterschool program for elementary school students and its LAUNCH Academy for high schoolers.
The camp consisted of a series of seminars and activities for kids K-12, complete with demonstrations and hands-on training in procedures such as dental exams, CPR, intubations, phlebotomy and even nuclear medicine imaging.
“This is nice, because this is what our students actually experience in the classroom with our equipment,” said Amy Yarshen, professor of imaging and radiologic science at AU’s College of Allied Health Sciences, who taught a class on nuclear imaging for the camp this year. “I wish I had this when I was their age.”
The day-long, free event was hosted at the Augusta University (AU) Health Sciences Building on Sebastian Way, via a partnership between LAUNCH Augusta and AU’s Office of Institutional Access, Success and Belonging, with the support of Wellstar’s DEI office.
“It’s a community initiative. We feel that getting kids involved at a young age, even starting at kindergarten, gets them interested in healthcare,” said Bernard Roberson, interim director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging with Wellstar, highlighting the current shortage in the healthcare workforce. “By getting them to a point where they’re understanding that healthcare is more than just being a doctor or nurse, [that] there’s a whole lot of other disciplines that help make healthcare happen, what we are trying to do is to bring to light those other disciplines and train them.”
The inaugural LAUNCH Camp in 2017 could only host 50 students. This year some 215 students participated, complemented by an expanded roster of instructors and, thus, more professions for the students to survey, including a nurse practitioner serving in the Army and a medical illustrator.
This year also saw the LAUNCH Camp have its first “full-circle” participant, as dentist Dr. Caroline Gloster, alumna of both the Dental College of Georgia and one of the earliest LAUNCH Camps, returned to be a presenter.
“For us it’s refreshing, because when you’re working in your career, you may just get so used to it that you forget how exciting and how bright it can be for that new student,” said LAUNCH Augusta founder and president Dr. Kendra Broussard, noting the effect interacting with the next generation of potential medical professionals has on volunteers. “I can even visibly see it in the students, and they’re so bright they’ll tell you stuff that will have you saying, ‘I didn’t even know that at your age!’”
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter covering business for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
