{"id":3218,"date":"2026-06-23T17:26:41","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T17:26:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rootsofprogress.org\/?p=3218"},"modified":"2026-06-23T17:26:43","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T17:26:43","slug":"progress-in-medicine-the-roots-of-progress-institutes-new-summer-career-exploration-program-has-started","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rootsofprogress.org\/progress-in-medicine-the-roots-of-progress-institutes-new-summer-career-exploration-program-has-started\/","title":{"rendered":"Progress in Medicine, the Roots of Progress Institute’s new summer career exploration program, has started"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

30 high school students are learning about the history and future of medicine, biotech, health<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Starting June 15th, the Roots of Progress team brought together 30 teenagers to learn about Progress in Medicine<\/em>. These talented, ambitious high schoolers are choosing to spend six weeks of their summer exploring careers in medicine, biotech, and health as part of the inaugural cohort of the Roots of Progress summer career exploration program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We launched Progress in Medicine<\/a> (PiM) in December as a test, a pilot program aimed at answering the question: How can we inspire young people to choose builder careers that advance human progress?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our hypothesis when we designed PiM was this: Schools generally are ill-equipped to help teens figure out their life purpose\u2014and teens and parents feel this problem urgently enough that they are willing to invest time and money. While many other great summer programs exist, none offered what we would have wanted for our own teens: a hybrid model that enabled teens to go deep on content and community building, without requiring them to commit their entire summer to one camp. Plus, few selective programs go broad: many competitive, ambitious programs zero in on one specialty, rather than helping teens explore a wide range of careers to see where they might fit. We thought teens needed to learn not just the what<\/em> of a specific discipline, but get the framework of the why<\/em> and how.<\/em> That means learning the story of historical progress in medicine and bio, including the people who made it happen. It also means meeting the people on the current frontiers, and learning where they as young people can build a career that matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is what Progress in Medicine<\/em> set out to do, and now that the program has started, we\u2019re even more excited about its potential to solve a real parent-student problem and have meaningful impact on the broader world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Without much marketing (one ad in an online summer camp listing space, plus a couple of emails to organizations like HOSA, a health care network for young people, plus our own network), we received well over 100 applications. The 30 students, ages 14\u201318, who we admitted in this inaugural class come from all over the US, Canada, and four international countries. Some are interested in becoming neurosurgeons, pediatricians, cancer researchers, and biomedical engineers; others are just curious about medicine and eager to figure out where they might fit. Some are already medical builders, launching an app with 10,000 users or putting together business plans for moonshot ideas; others have built in other areas (AI tools, computers, robots); and others have volunteered or had challenging summer jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This week showed us that we selected well. We had great (on-time, camera-on!) attendance in our four two-hour long Zoom sessions. Teens maxed out their break-out room chats, completed their online assignments, and flooded our Zoom chat with their answers. For our first advisor session on sanitation, 22 of our students asked a wide range of questions of Dr. Jake Swett,<\/a> Executive Director and founder of Blueprint Biosecurity\u2014and their questions showed how deeply many had researched Dr. Swett and his company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Progress in Medicine<\/em> program is led by Laura Mazer<\/a>, a Stanford-trained surgeon turned educator, who writes about the history of Medicine on Substack<\/a>. PiM has three parts:<\/p>\n\n\n\n