San Francisco Health Investigators Program

San Francisco Health Investigators (SF HI) is a new and unique research program designed for San Francisco High School students. SF HI is designed to leverage participating students’ cultural knowledge as they take on the role of Student Researchers and investigate the awareness, knowledge, and attitudes about current health issues in their communities. SF HI seeks to empower participating students to positively affect health in their home communities, and Student Researchers will use their research outcomes to design messaging campaigns to build awareness, counter misconceptions, and inform health behaviors.


 

Program Overview

 

SF HI is structured to provide an immersive summer experience at UC San Francisco, where students will learn the science background that underlies the issue they are studying, principles of public health, survey research and data analysis, as well as marketing and messaging strategies. The program continues into the school year, providing students the opportunity to run a large research project to test the effectiveness of the health messages they designed over the summer. The cohort will convene roughly monthly to engage in this work. As part of the program, SF HI students will work closely with a college counselor helping to ensure that SF HI participants are solidly on the path to college as they begin their junior year of high school.