#@fl-app

Every once in a while, we see that thing go around with a picture of Lake Michigan and people trying to argue that it’s not a lake photo, it’s really the ocean.

No, that’s a lake.

FLINT, MI -- A Flint program aimed at urban youth encourages careers in public health, medicine, and research to diversify the healthcare workforce.

One of the goals of the Flint Public Health Youth Academy is to reduce and ultimately eliminate racial and ethnic health disparities by increasing the number of African American and other minorities in the targeted healthcare fields.

Kent Key, a health disparities researcher and faculty member at Michigan State University’s College of Human Medicine, launched the academy in 2019. He refers to the academy as his strategic initiative that he says emerged from his experience with the Flint Water Crisis.

To diversify the public health workforce, he said early exposure to a range of health fields is essential.

“You know what a police officer looks like,” Key said. “He has a uniform on, right? You know what a firefighter looks like but, really, what does an epidemiologist look like, right? You can’t aspire to be what you’ve never seen or what you don’t know.”

Flint has is 54% Black, 40% white and 4% Hispanic or Latino population, according to recent Census numbers.

But when it comes to representation of minority voices in public health fields, the city lacks diversity in its workforce, said Kent, a Flint native.

He said this mirrors a nationwide trend of underrepresentation of minorities in public health and medical fields.