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Los Fresnos Alum Attends Annual A-PRIME TIME Summer Conference
- Updated: July 31, 2015
Photos and story by Rocky Villafranca Jr./LFN
Alexis Villafranca, first from the left, with other students in the Medical Program at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley at Brownsville.
Los Fresnos High School alumni Alexis Villafranca traveled to Galveston recently to attend the 5th Annual A-PRIME TIME Summer Conference held in Galveston, TX along with doctors, professors, and fellow students.
The A-PRIME TIME mission is to provide accessible and affordable, high quality pre-health professional education that meets regional and national needs through a novel and vibrant program of medical training to prepare students from the principally Hispanic population for successful completion of medical school. The program provides an innovative and rigorous curriculum, emphasizing new pedagogues and mentoring, designed to integrate academic and clinical experiences through all years of training. It also supports access for a diverse population through multiple entry and exit points, promoting efficiency in the education of physicians, medical scientists, and other health professionals. The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley at Brownsville, Univeristy of Texas at El Paso, and The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley at Edinburg are participants in this program.
Upon arriving at the University of Texas Medical Branch on Galveston Island, purportedly the oldest college west of the Mississippi River, Alexis dined with peers and mentors. The following day she was taken through a variety of workshops including caring and interviewing “patients”, something Alexis already has experience with thanks to the Medical Program at UTB being the only campus at present requiring their students to shadow doctors at the hospital and regularly interact with patients.
During the conference Alexis also examined a preserved heart and brain from 1897, learned about heart dysfunctions and heard various examples of heart murmurs.
All this with the goal to, “make a new breed of doctors”, says Alexis, “that are compassionate towards their patients rather than not.”
Alexis will be a junior at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley at Brownsville this coming fall.