The impact of Pathology Outreach Program (POP) on United States and Canadian high school students.

Given recent trends in National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) data, there exists a looming deficit of practicing pathologists. As such, the Pathology Outreach Program (POP) was established in 2018 in the United States, and in 2022 in Canada, to educate high school students about pathology and laboratory medicine to help curb this projected shortage. We present survey data gathered from several educational sessions hosted at high schools in the United States (U.S.) and Canada over a 5-year period comparing participants' perceptions and awareness of pathology both before and after each session. Using this data, we wish to highlight the positive impact of POP on increasing students' awareness and appreciation for careers in pathology or laboratory medicine. This data will also highlight the additional work that must be done to further boost public knowledge of laboratory medicine's contributions to patient care. We hope this project will lay the foundation for further improvements to laboratory visibility and inspire additional outreach efforts to mitigate a future workforce shortage.
Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(© 2024 The Authors.)