In June, I travelled to Nashville, TN with a group of high school students for the HOSA International Leadership Conference. I loved interacting with students who are interested in medical fields, including public health, physical therapy, nursing, clinical medicine, and more!

The students who attended the conference had already qualified from through multiple rounds of competition at their local and state levels.  I had the opportunity to attend as a chaperone after learning about the conference from my sister who attended as a competitor. The events that students competed in varied, and included topics that are applied, such as sports medicine. (Side note: I was amazed that one of the other chaperones injured her ankle, one of the high school students knew exactly how to tape it!) Other students also competed in events where they had to create a public service announcement or public health outreach program in their community.

While I was there chaperoning kids from my old high school (Novi), I also had the opportunity to judge the Biomedical Debate event. The debate topic was whether the benefits of genetically modified foods outweigh the harms. This is very relevant topic given the recent legislation proposed (at the time of this event) and passed by the House (now) that requires the labeling of some GMO foods. It was also the perfect event for me to judge given my concentration in Genome Sciences & Policy as an undergrad at Duke. I was very impressed by students' quality of preparation and research! I knew that they were doing an excellent job because I found myself being swayed to the affirmative or negative side depending on the quality of their arguments in each round.

Finally, I wouldn't be the proud older sister that I am if I didn't mention that my sister's team placed fourth in the category of Community Awareness! So exciting! As a whole, Novi High School had 27 top 10 finalists, one 3rd place finish, and three 2nd place finishes. What an amazing crew.

In addition to all the conference programming, we also had the chance to go line dancing. Now, back in Ann Arbor I am excitedly awaiting the arrival of the new M1s!