Roveda Leading STEM Lessons for Pascua Yaqui and Hispanic Students
A person’s proximity to a hospital has a direct impact on their quality of health, but health care systems are much more than a single building. University of Arizona faculty are training new high school graduates and Pima Community College students from the Pascua Yaqui tribe and the Hispanic community. They’re learning to become future engineers and alleviate health care shortcomings on reservations and other underserved communities with the help of a National Science Foundation grant.
The 10-week online course is part of Center to Stream Healthcare in Place (C2SHIP), a national consortium which aims to bridge the gap between early academic research and commercial readiness in order to accelerate “decentralized health care.”
“These students will be the future advocates for healthy living and well-being in the community,” said ECE Professor Janet Roveda, director of the UA’s C2SHIP site. “Like any other community in Arizona, the Pascua Yaqui tribe also faces chronic diseases like diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.”
A two-year, $220,000 supplemental NSF grant is supporting the tuition-free program. The Pascua Yaqui and Hispanic students are using Precision Health Institute, an online digital health program, for part of their education. The students are learning basics in public health, digital health, wearable technology and machine learning for biomedical data. Each lesson also integrates the traditional Pascua Yaqui health paradigm, which views medicine holistically.
Moving away from hospitals, decentralized "care in place" health care includes mobile care service, telemedicine, home visits, wellness programs, and use of Internet of Things technology. Along with this decentralized model, C2SHIP aims to increase access to personalized health care through infrastructure, services, community engagement and workforce development.
C2SHIP’s UA site received the grant in February 2023. The course, which includes one hour-and-a-half session each week, will end before the start of the academic school year. This allows for a natural pipeline for students to continue their STEM education.
From the start of the program, Roveda has worked closely with the Pascua Yaqui tribal officials, health and education department staff, meeting parents and students in the community.
“It is a beautiful community. We want to provide well-trained future experts to this nice community,” Roveda said, who is also a professor of Biomedical Engineering. “The students I met there are brilliant and talented. I do not doubt that they will be our new students at UA.”