Mentoring Underrepresented Minoritized Students for Success

Abstract

The underrepresentation of minoritized populations in public health, health care, and research disciplines hurts the advancement of science and the communities disproportionately affected by health disparities (Valantine & Collins, 2020). While the implementation of pipeline programs like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Undergraduate Public Health Scholars (CUPS) Program have been invested to increase workforce diversity in the last decade, the current workforce remains racially homogenous, and there are significant challenges in developing and retaining a diverse public health and health care workforce. The CDC includes mentorship as an essential component of the CUPS Program. Just as it is critical for success in academia, mentorship in public health training translates the hidden curriculum and reinterprets cultural and professional norms. Mentorship contributes to underrepresented minoritized (URM) students’ educational and professional development by increasing access, promoting persistence, and allowing students to visualize what success looks like throughout every stage of their training (Carter, 2006; Lewis et al., 2016; Young et al., 2021). While the provision of scholarship can also increase access and promote persistence, the power of human connection and role modeling offered through mentorship is paramount. This article provides a historical and cultural perspective on what mentorship means in a minoritized population such as in the African American community. It discusses the unique needs of URM students and offers methods to effectively mentoring them, and ways for the system to address the scarcity of mentors required to meet the enormous needs in support of the nation’s charge to increase URM groups in public health, health care, and biomedical sciences. Last, this article highlights what students can do to make themselves more attractive to mentors and recommends selecting candidates of maximum potential for the CUPS Program. While students generally welcome mentorship, incidental reports from the CUPS participants suggest possible misunderstanding and generational gaps on mentorship style. Insights from another generation of mentors could help demystify and explain why some mentors may be (or can be perceived as being) more protective and critical than others. Throughout history, mentorship has played a crucial role in passing on knowledge and skills to the next generation. Mentorship is as important in this context as it was for many African American youths in the segregated South of the United States. In the segregated South, African American youths were accustomed to both formal and informal mentorships. The formal mentorship was from parents, teachers, administrators in the school system, coaches, and clergy. Two primary goals for these mentors were to (1) help children avoid prohibited activities that would lead to imprisonment or death and (2) receive a quality education. Informal mentorship was a process fueled by the concept of “in loco parentis,” in that if children were misbehaving away from home, any adult could “discipline” them “as if they were their own.” Although many may consider this as an extreme process, “in loco parentis” has primarily been a part of the African American culture and psyche as a way to protect and corral the young. Additionally, children were taught at a young age that “they must work twice as hard to receive half as much.” Many mentors and program officials were perhaps operating under these assumptions but were misunderstood by students. Whatever our social identity or cultural norm, we have all felt alienated from time to time. Feelings of alienation are often greater among minoritized students who must live and function in a culture and institution that privileges Whiteness. Every day, URM students receive negative messages about themselves from the media, social media, students, and sometimes teachers, contributing to their poor self-image, low self-esteem, and lack of 1054086 PHPXXX10.1177/23733799211054086Pedagogy in Health PromotionBrown et al. editorial2021