American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) individuals are historically underrepresented in bioscience and health science professions. Limited presence in these roles has implications for healthcare available to AI/AN populations. Urgency is growing to invest in educating AI/AN youth by providing opportunities in healthcare. This study's purpose was to identify how AI/AN undergraduate students' self-efficacy and science identity changed from participating in the 2022 Native American Summer Research Internship (NARI). Cultural demographics were collected. Surveys and focus groups assessed participants' bioscience and healthcare career self-efficacy, and knowledge and confidence in research and AI/AN healthcare issues. More than 50% of NARI post-program assessment responses indicated increases in students' self-efficacy in biomedical science, research, and knowledge of AI/AN health issues. Our study indicated that pathway programs such as NARI provide opportunities to increase self-efficacy. Thus, we recommend increasing accessibility to such programs, seeing that they can empower AI/AN undergraduates to pursue biosciences and healthcare professions.
Mostaghimi et al. (Tue,) studied this question.
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