Creating a Pipeline for Young Health Care Workers

What Symone Boyd knew about a career in health care is what she saw at the doctor’s office. That’s the only way you worked in medicine, she thought as a 14-year-old. She respected it, but it’s not what she wanted to do.

Symone Boyd is why Nationwide Children’s Hospital’s mentorship programs exist. The programs support young people academically and socially. They can also be the beginning of a pipeline to employment in health care – especially for youth who don’t have much exposure to the industry, and don’t know that there are many career paths in health care.

Boyd had a Nationwide Children’s mentor at South High School in Columbus. She became a member of Nationwide Children’s Upward Bound Math and Science program, which gives free, year-round, college and career readiness support to first-generation, low-income high school students. Nationwide Children’s is the only children’s hospital in the United States that sponsors this program.

And now she’s a student at Columbus State Community College with a summer internship at Nationwide Children’s through the hospital Youth and Young Adult Employment Program. As it happens, she’s interning with the Upward Bound Math and Science Program, where she first learned about the field of public health. It’s a career in health care that doesn’t have much to do with a doctor’s office.

“I was in UBMS as a student, and now I see the business side of it,” said Boyd, 21. “I’m getting to see the budget, and how you create new ideas that will make a difference for these students.”

In 2022, coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, Nationwide Children’s had 73 young people in its Youth and Young Adult Employment Program, working across 66 departments. Twelve were offered permanent jobs.

Boyd is now one of more than 100 paid young interns at Nationwide Children’s in the summer of 2023.

“These are not just summer jobs for teenagers and adults in their early 20s,” said Nick Jones, vice president of Community Wellness at Nationwide Children’s. “These are real internships in research, clinical care, community development, communications, planning – all parts of the hospital. We want them to succeed, and we want to be part of their success.”   

Nationwide Children’s may be best known in the population health space because of its efforts to improve and develop affordable housing through Healthy Homes, a part of the Healthy Neighborhoods Healthy Families initiative. But other pillars of the Healthy Neighborhoods Healthy Families initiative involve educational support and workforce development, like the programs that Boyd has been involved in.

Now, she plans on receiving an associate degree in health communication from Columbus State and going on to pursue a degree in public health from a four-year institution.

“I don’t think I would have known about public health if it hadn’t been for Nationwide Children’s, and now it’s what I’m planning on doing with my career,” said Boyd.