PEERS
An Honors in Community Health Project
PEERS
Project Engagement Encouraging Rising Students (PEERS), supported by the University of Houston, UH Honors College, UH CHWi, and the Hewlett Packard Enterprise Data Science Institute, focuses on encouraging STEM education and providing mentorship to underserved students in grades 9-12. PEERS grew from and embodies the model of Community Health Workers (CHWs) as simultaneous educators and advocates. Initially conceived in a CHW class, this program pairs high school students and the University of Houston undergraduates to create long-lasting, effective, and engaging community projects that are meaningful and relevant. In addition, facilitating community engagement through collaboration and project-based learning encourages both our undergraduate and high school participants to pursue academic and professional development to advocate for improved health outcomes in their communities. Each student team presents their final project at the PEERS competition to compete for a monetary prize.
Member Expectations
Undergraduate mentors will facilitate 1 hour weekly meetings with high school teams at one of our partner schools. Mentors will facilitate learning modules that focus on the social determinants of health and guide their student teams in designing community health projects. Mentors can expect to build a natural mentorship with their teams, sometimes providing advice about college, careers, and life.
Undergraduates may also choose to sign on instead to become a PEERS intern and aid in designing and implementing engaging events for the entire program. In the past, this team has created recruitment materials, hosted the ‘Pizza with Professionals’ Career Lunch, and used directed acyclic graphs to demonstrate the impact of PEERS.
Project Heads
2024-2025 Winners - Theme: Preventative Care
First Place (Mission Squash)
Breath F.R.E.E.
Rowan Lau, Leila Malik, Oliver Manzano, Jayden Oyervidez
Second Place (Austin High School)
Teaching Everyone Effective Tooth Hygiene
Niah Facundo, Ahtzyry Lara, Daymory Osorio, Abigail Sanchez
Challenge Early College High School (Third Place)
Harvest Houston
Omar Alburki, Karina Charvarria, Jessica De Los Angeles, Alexis Turis
Research Projects
EFFICACY OF AN UNDERGRADUATE-LED NEAR-PEER MENTORSHIP PROGRAM ON HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT ATTITUDES TOWARDS COMMUNITY HEALTH
Project Engagement Encouraging Rising Students (PEERS) is an undergraduate-run mentorship program that targets grades 9-12 in high schools and organizations across Houston. The primary objectives of PEERS include improving understanding of community health among young members of at-risk communities through project-based-learning education, providing an enriching mentorship experience between high school students in Houston and University of Houston students, and offering opportunities for professional and academic development to both high school students and university undergraduates. As part of the PEERS curriculum, high school students completed reflective journaling designed to track and measure growth in three target topics: (1) their personal goals, (2) their interests and views on health in communities, and (3) their relationship with their mentor group. Data from this evaluation will be used to assess the impact of PEERS on student fulfillment, attitudes, and understanding of community health topics.
About the Authors:
Tony Trabulsi (B.S. in Human Nutrition), David Hartman (B.S. in Psychology, Minor
in Medicine and Society), and Vyshnavi Davuluri (B.S. in Biology, Minor in Medicine
and Society) served as Project Heads for the 2021-2022 academic year. In addition
to implementing the PEERS program, they designed a qualitative internal evaluation
to measure and improve the PEERS experience for high school students. The evaluation
was presented at the Texas Educator’s Academies Collaborative for Health Professions
Southeast (TEACH-S) conference in May 2022. The authors aim to publish the evaluation
once the data evaluation has been completed.
EFFICACY OF A COMMUNITY HEALTH DRIVEN MENTORSHIP
Efficacy of A Community Health Driven Mentorship
Project Engagement Encouraging Rising Students (PEERS) implements an undergraduate-high school mentorship to begin conversations about community health, empowering high school students to address issues relevant to their community through project-based learning. This study focuses on mentor growth that is often overlooked in the mentee-mentor relationship. This study utilizes a qualitative approach, using questionnaires and virtual focus groups over three checkpoints to assess growth in (1) awareness and interest in community health (2) leadership and professional development, and (3) feeling competent as simultaneous community health educators and advocates.
About the Authors
Hannah Wright (BS in Liberal Studies) and Christian Bernard Alarcon (M.S. in Biology)
served as mentors for the 2019-2020 academic year. They also participated in the PEERS
Special Projects Team to help with logistics and behind-the-scenes planning. This
year, they designed a program evaluation utilizing a qualitative approach to evaluating
undergraduate mentor growth through a series of three checkpoints. In April, their
findings were presented at the Texas Educator’s Academies Collaborative for Health
Professions Southeast (TEACH-S) conference. They will be presented at the October
American Public Health Association (APHA) Meeting & Expo. (Hannah Wright also has
a minor in Biology, Nutrition and Medicine, and Society.)
Contact Us
- Email us at peers.houston@gmail.com
- Follow us on Instagram@hich.peers
- Join us on GroupMe!
Related Links
Honors In Community Health
