USC Verdugo Hills Hospital (USC-VHH) has demonstrated an enduring commitment to community engagement through its Healthcare Day of Discovery program, an immersive outreach initiative designed to inspire and educate the next generation of healthcare professionals. What began as a local outreach effort for Foothills-area high school students has evolved into a multi-tiered educational and workforce development initiative serving local high school students, nationally recognized USC Bovard Scholars and Glendale Community College students.
Through this program, USC-VHH provides students with meaningful exposure to the collaborative and multidisciplinary nature of healthcare while helping address the industry’s ongoing workforce shortage. Students engage directly with USC-VHH’s physicians, nurses, frontline staff and hospital leaders while exploring a wide range of clinical and non-clinical career pathways including nursing, medicine, imaging, laboratory services, nutrition, information technology, business administration and more.
USC-VHH hosts three distinct Healthcare Day of Discovery events annually, each tailored to reach students from diverse educational and socioeconomic backgrounds at critical stages in their educational journeys, creating greater access to health care career pathways for students who may not otherwise have exposure to these opportunities.
The hospital’s longstanding high school program welcomes students from schools across the Foothills region and USC-VHH later expanded the initiative to include USC Bovard Scholars, a program serving high-achieving high school seniors from across the nation, many of whom are first-generation college-bound students. Most recently, the hospital broadened its outreach efforts even further by creating a dedicated Healthcare Day of Discovery program for Glendale Community College students as they prepare to make important decisions about their educational and professional futures.
