This June, 25 local college students embarked on a journey to explore health careers with mentors across the Coachella Valley through a program that’s been taking place every summer since 2010.

Over the past 12 years, OneFuture Coachella Valley, Health Career Connection and 68 local partners have facilitated 274 paid internships for 235 valley students. These full-time, 10-week internships allow students to focus their time on high-impact projects benefitting valley residents. Over a dozen years, that’s a total of $913,000 in summer wages for our students and almost 110,000 hours invested in making the valley a healthier place to call home!

Host sites this summer included Desert Oasis Healthcare, Borrego Health, Desert Regional Medical Center, Jewish Family Services of the Desert, Desert Healthcare District, Coachella Valley Unified School District, Alianza Coachella Valley, HARC, FIND Food Bank, Leadership Counsel for Justice & Accountability, Office of Congressman Ruiz, UCR Future Physician Leaders, COFEM, OneFuture Coachella Valley, Youth Leadership Institute and Coachella Valley Volunteers in Medicine.

Following are just a few examples of the impact in our community: Jason Davalos, an undergrad at Cal State University San Bernardino (CSUSB) Palm Desert Campus, interned at Desert Oasis Healthcare and designed outreach to Spanish-speaking Medicare patients. Crystal Escobar, a Public Health student at Cal Baptist University, worked at Desert Regional Medical Center supporting frontline workers with quality stroke metrics. Adriana Canizales Cruz, a biology major at College of the Desert, interned with Jewish Family Services of the Desert and helped provide resources for vulnerable patients. Yareli Felix, a Public Health Policy student at University of California Irvine interned at Coachella Valley Unified School District assisting in promoting Care Rooms at various school sites by creating flyers and digital resources. Daphnie Vhin Driza, a nursing student at CSUSB Palm Desert Campus, worked with OneFuture Coachella Valley and created the framework for an Emerging Health Professionals Showcase event that will take place this fall for high school health academy students. She also designed a social media campaign highlighting several of the 2022 OneFuture HCC interns as shown here.

Check out @onefuturecv on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook to see more intern profiles. For more information on OneFuture Coachella Valley, visit www.onefuturecv.org.