ROCHESTER, N.Y. — There aren’t enough healthcare workers in the region to care for the people who need them. That’s why hospitals are working to get more young people with diverse backgrounds interested in healthcare careers.

Seventh and eighth-grade girls at Rochester Regional Health’s Workforce Development Center learned about different healthcare careers on Tuesday. The hope is that the health system can keep them interested now and through high school and maybe even beyond that.

The girls are students at Young Women’s College Prep Charter School in Rochester.

The point of the workshop was “making sure that the young women understand healthcare careers, other than just physicians or nurses but all the other kinds of careers that they could possibly think about and to give them hope and a reality that, even though they may have barriers that, they can reach these goals and accomplishments as well,” said Charlene Wilson, EdD, Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer at Rochester Regional Health.

Seventh grader Remy Holley-Snow liked hearing from people who look like her about how they got where they are.

“Basically, where they came from and where they’re at now,” Holley-Snow said. When asked what she thought of their stories, she replied, “I really liked them, it was really interesting, and some of them I really can relate to.”

She can relate to and be inspired by their stories.

“I love helping people, I love making people smile, making people’s day. And I love working with old people because it reminds me of taking care of my grandma or my grandfather,” Holley-Snow said.

It’s young women like Remy that Rochester Regional is hoping to hold on to.

“We explained some of the volunteering services that they can do to keep them engaged with healthcare and then when they graduate from middle school and go on to high school, we have programs that they can enroll themselves in so that they could further their understanding of healthcare and also get paid for it,” Wilson explained.

For Kyla Rivers, the hands-on activities helped spark an interest in a possible healthcare career.

“We do CPR, we’re learning about bacteria, certain stuff like that,” Rivers said. And while she’s not sure what the future will bring, this at least got her thinking. “I think it’ll bring good opportunities for me, maybe in the long run,” she said.

While it was all girls at Tuesday’s workshop, Rochester Regional said it recently did this with an all-boys school too, and said the event was a success.

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