From Spanish to books, holidays to the environment, FHC has a club for everything, resulting in countless opportunities for community involvement outside of the classroom that are available to students.
One FHC club focused on health education is Health Occupations Students of America, HOSA for short. Every year, the members go to competitions to face off against other students on their health science knowledge and hopefully score in the top eight in order to advance to the state-wide competition.
Senior Ana Bolt has been involved in HOSA for three years and is now a HOSA board member: a group of talented students chosen to represent the FHC HOSA team. After hearing about the club during her freshman year, Ana decided to join the team and has loved it ever since.
“My favorite part about HOSA is competing and getting together with my friends,” Ana said. “Usually, my friends and I have busy schedules, but during HOSA, we are able to share a common passion, medicine, and have fun together while competing at Regionals or States. I also enjoy celebrating our accomplishments after the competition by having a party.”
Ana plans on majoring in biochemistry with a biophysics and neuroscience minor. After college, she hopes to become a pathologist. While these are quite ambitious plans, HOSA is the perfect place to get the best experience possible in order to be successful. This is truly the goal of HOSA: experimenting with different potential careers and seeing what one likes.
At competitions, students can participate in a multitude of events, spanning across nearly all branches of science. There is truly something for everyone, as events contain aspects ranging from microbiology and chemistry to anatomy/physiology and environmental health.
Another avid participant in HOSA and board member is senior Kayla Quach. She is planning on choosing a career at the intersection of math and science. Some areas she is considering are pharmacology and anesthesiology, however, she thinks HOSA is beneficial for everyone, even those not necessarily planning on pursuing a scientific career. Anyone and everyone can and should join HOSA. Today, there are many arbitrary standards surrounding who “should” be a nurse or a doctor, but Kayla finds them unfounded and harmful.
“I think that [health] shouldn’t be generalized as a female or male field because both jobs are very important and difficult regardless of what gender you are,” Kayla said. “The stereotypes seen within these fields are the result of long standing gender norms and biases in educational/professional advancement which only serve to discredit female doctors for the hard work they do.”
Kayla believes that men shouldn’t be discouraged from or shamed for going into nursing, same with women who want to become doctors. HOSA trains everyone equally, and standards are the same for all genders. Additionally, there’s rampant health discrimination against women regarding unequal diagnoses. Many people with female anatomy struggle with having their health issues go unheard and be misdiagnosed because of the sexism that exists in medicine. Women contributing to the medical field can offer a unique perspective and hopefully solve this issue, Kayla believes.
“I think that it is unfair to demasculinize men for working as a nurse just because it is typically a female role,” Kayla said. “I would love to see more women becoming doctors because it would allow for better advocacy of female health issues which might go disregarded otherwise.”
None of this hard work to fight for equal representation and education in the health sciences would be possible without HOSA’s faculty advisor, Paige Hallock.
Hallock is the teacher of a variety of different health and fitness classes at FHC, as well as leading the sex education program at the middle school.
Many individuals, sadly, end up working jobs they don’t enjoy, but Hallock loves her career and that she gets to interact with young people.
“I decided to go into health education to empower young scholars to become life-long healthy people,” Hallock said. “I enjoy teaching the core concepts, interpersonal communication, and life skills to my students to allow them to become confident and competent health literate individuals. The world of health and technology is always growing and changing. As a health teacher, I am always looking to connect and relate the content of class to new developments and events in society.”
From when she started working at FHC to now, she has tried to keep the same goal: helping students be happy and healthy. This has extended to the HOSA club by aiding students in navigating the many career opportunities that are open to them.
This is the very reason why Ana loves HOSA. No matter who you are or what your plan is after high school, HOSA can serve as a guide in the sea of different health science careers.
“HOSA has a very open community, and everyone is welcome, even if you don’t plan to pursue a career in medicine,” Ana said. “While HOSA is centered around STEM, there are universal teamwork events, like HOSA Bowl and Community Awareness, that don’t require as much medical knowledge beforehand. It’s a good club if you are unsure what you want to study in the future and to try out medicine before committing to a pre-med program in college.”
HOSA is determined to help all kinds of students find who they are, be successful, and discover what they want to be. At their yearly competitions, they represent the Rangers well and, at the same time, learn more about themselves and who they want to be.
“It is absolutely okay to not know what career you want to do for the rest of your life in your high school time,” Hallock said. “I want people to know that you do not need to declare a career in medicine to be involved. If you are interested in health, science, and development, come check it out. It is a great group to be a part of, learn from, and grow in the community.”
