A new website hopes to raise awareness and provide learning opportunities for young people interested in health care careers.
The project was started by Kaiser Permanente Hawaiʻi Dr. Lee Miyasato in 2019, but what makes the website unique is that a group of Maui High School students helped build and design the site to help it appeal to people their age.
"Throughout my over 25-year career, I've been passionate, very passionate about educating high school students, especially because I'm one of them from a rural local community in Kealakekua. We have limited health care resources in our neighbor island communities," Miyasato said.
In 2019, he was working to create a health care fair but ran into too many obstacles. So he decided to create a website instead.
"I thought, well, I could develop a website that would depict the different health care workers' occupations and what they actually do, and the workers would be workers in the backyard of these students," he said.
The website features interactive simulations of a patient's journey in a medical facility. At each step, the program shares how different medical professionals contribute to the patient's care.
Maui High alum Romelyn Tabangcura is a recent nursing school graduate who helped build the website.
"My role was developing kind of a guideline of how the website should look like and conduct research on the various health care careers that would be featured on the website," Tabangcura said. "This included outlining the website structure and ensuring that the content was both informative but also accurate."
Tabangcura said her involvement played a pivotal role in solidifying her decision to pursue a nursing career.
Given the ongoing health care worker shortage in the islands, Miyasato hopes the website brings more young people into the health care field.
"Kids getting these jobs, they can actually help people, help people right in their community," Miyasato said. "I just think that's the best job in the world."
This interview aired on The Conversation on Aug. 27, 2024. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1.
