Indigenous Students Gain Hands-On Look at Health Care

By Dirk Hoffman

Presented by the Jacobs School and the Seneca Nation Education Department, the event hosted 64 students, the majority of whose tribal heritage is the Seneca Nation. Other tribal heritages represented were Chippewa, Onondaga and Tuscarora.

The seven generations in the program’s title refer to a Haudenosaunee principle that emphasizes making decsions that will benefit the seven generations to come, while honoring the seven generations who came before.

Fourth-year medical student Amanda Bahgat co-founded the event with Frank Wolfe, an undergraduate student in UB’s College of Arts and Sciences, who is a member of the Seneca Nation, Beaver Clan.

Bahgat is not Native American, but grew up in Fredonia near the Cattaraugus Reservation.

She had a revelation as she was sitting in a “Medicine & Society” class as a first-year medical student, when a faculty member asked if anyone in the class identified as Native American.

“In a class of 180 students, not one person raised their hand,” Bahgat said. “That moment really stayed with me.”

“I later found out that, each year, of the roughly 22,500 MD matriculants in the United States, fewer than 300 identify as American Indian or Alaska Native, even when including those who identify in combination with another race or ethnicity,” she added.

Bahgat said she started talking to Wolfe about ways they could work to close that gap and he remembered a field trip he took as a youth where he saw a surgical robot for the first time. He found it fascinating and it left an impression on him — from there, the idea for 7th Generation Operation was born.

At the event, the students were split up into groups and rotated through several hands-on workshops led by students and faculty from all of UB’s health sciences schools and the Canisius University physician assistant studies program.

The activities ranged from learning how to suture and draw blood, performing intubation and cardiopulmonary resuscitation, how to use surgical tools and how to perform ultrasound imaging.

The students learned about opportunities in areas including medicine, physical assistant studies, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy, athletic training, physical and occupational therapy, speech and language pathology, audiology, public health and social work.

In the dental medicine workshop, students practiced rebuilding chipped teeth on models, as well as suturing bananas and mandible models to simulate oral surgery. In the Gross Anatomy Lab, the students had the opportunity to learn about and handle human specimens such as hearts and knees.

Jenna Marshall, a Kenmore West High School student, said her favorite portion of the program was the nursing demonstration and the ultrasound testing.

She is interested in a career in interventional radiology, which is the minimally invasive, image-guided treatment of medical conditions that once required open surgery.

“I liked doing the ultrasound today. Ultrasound is used in a lot of interventional radiology procedures,” Marshall said.

Gowanda High School student Lilliana Pierce said she “loved the physical therapy session because that is a field I am very interested in.”

“This experience was really nice,” she said. “I loved how it was really hands-on and how we got to experience everything in this facility.”

Bahgat said she hoped the program “sparks the students’ curiosity about health care careers and helps them see a place for themselves in these fields.”

“We want them to leave feeling encouraged, connected, and confident as they continue exploring their interests and hopefully consider a future in the health professions,” she said.

Those sentiments were echoed by David A. Milling, MD, executive director of the Jacobs School’s Office of Medical Education, when he told the students he wanted them to understand “that this building is your building — and everything that happens in this building are things that you should be a part of.”

“You shouldn’t feel like this is a one-time visit. If there are things that happened today that sparked your interest, you need to develop those things and work with your mentors to continue to grow from these experiences,” he said.

Bahgat also said the addition of a patient case to this year’s program highlighted how social, cultural and structural factors impact care.

“By working through the case together, participants explored how collaborative, community-informed care can advance trust and equity,” she said.

“Cultural humility is essential in health care because it emphasizes lifelong learning, self-reflection, and recognition of others’ lived experiences,” Bahgat added. “7th Generation Operation promotes this by creating space for Indigenous students and health professional faculty and students to learn with and from one another.”

Participating UB schools were the Jacobs School, School of Dental Medicine, School of Nursing, School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, School of Public Health and Health Professions, School of Social Work and the College of Arts and Sciences.

Michael J. Oldani, PhD, executive director for interprofessional practice and education (IPE) at UB, is the event’s faculty adviser.

He noted the program was a great example of interprofessionalism in a variety of ways.

“We are exposing young people to a variety of different professions, and also how they work together,” he said. “We also brought together UB and Canisius health and social care professional students to basically run the entire event. We also had a team of interprofessional faculty members working together, organizing, and recruiting their students, and modeling how to intentionally create a professional program.”

“In short, it was an example of collaboration and intentional collaboration on a lot of different level levels.”

Oldani said the Office of IPE plans to carry on the 7th Generation Operation event into the future.

“This was my first go around with it and I found it to be a highly successful event,” he said. “We are also in need of student champions for the event and will be doing some awareness in a recruiting campaign this fall to find the next generation of medical students that would like to host the event.”

“Amanda also helped to create some partnerships locally with community organizations that are very interested in advancing educational opportunities for Indigenous students and we plan to work together with them in the future,” Oldani added.