ANN ARBOR—The University of Michigan School of Public Health has received a $10,000 grant from the Metro Health Foundation of Detroit for the School’s Summer Enrichment Program in Health Services Administration. The grant will help support five undergraduate minority students who will serve internships in community health programs in Southeast Michigan this summer.

“Minority group members are seriously under-represented in the top echelons of health care management, as they are in all of the health professions,” said Richard Lichtenstein, associate professor and director of the program. “Greater ethnic and racial diversity is needed in the field, not only for reasons of equity, but also because diversity will enhance the competitiveness and effectiveness of the nation’s newly emerging health care systems and organizations.”

The Summer Enrichment Program’s summer internships are designed to attract minority undergraduates into careers in health administration by matching them with top level health care executives in a wide range of health programs. During the summer, each student works with an administrator in a major health care organization in Southeast Michigan. Many of the area’s hospitals, HMOs, insurance companies and health systems participate.

“The students not only learn from their personal interaction with the administrators, but also perform a project that is identified by the organization,” Lichtenstein said. They also attend workshops on the U-M campus to learn about the complexities of the U.S. health care system and explore minority health issues as well as develop skills such as mastering the use of spreadsheets. Additionally, students take classes that prepare them for the graduate record exam. The Metro Health Foundation is a private foundation that awards grants to Michigan organizations for health care and health-related fields.