Future Focused Education: Paid Internships for Low-Income Teens

As New Mexico faces a medical staffing crisis, a local partnership is connecting low-income students to employers for paid internships

By Carnegie Corporation of New York October 11, 2024

Future of Learning & Work

Future Focused Education is working with partner high schools, the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, and the New Mexico Hospital Association to connects low-income students to employers for paid internships in the sector and beyond. (Credit: Carnegie Corporation of New York)

Cesiah Gonzalez had thought about joining the Marines, but in her sophomore year of high school in Albuquerque, she tried a paid internship as a medical assistant in a family health clinic. She learned to take vital signs, interview patients, and file their medical histories — and found helping them deeply rewarding. Now she aims to be a nurse, or perhaps a combat medic.

An internship “is the best way to discover what you really want to do,” said Gonzalez, a 19-year-old who has started her second year of college at the University of New Mexico. “You’re getting paid to do something that you love without the pressures of an actual job, and you’re just learning a lot.”

Gonzalez found her internship through Future Focused Education, or FFE, a nonprofit based in Albuquerque that connects low-income students to employers for paid internships in a wide range of fields, with a special focus on health care. Like many states, New Mexico faces a medical staffing crisis, and hospitals are searching for ways to grow their own labor pool. FFE works with its partner high schools, the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, and the New Mexico Hospital Association to increase internships they dub “X3” — for “explore, experience, expand.”

By the Numbers

Future Focused Education (FFE) has provided over 1,300 internships in multiple industry sectors and paid over $1.7 million to young people since 2017.

FFE has provided placements and coaching for 261 health care internships in more than 55 employer sites since 2017.

35 percent of interns have been hired by a health care employer or completed another internship.

92 percent of interns are students of color and all are low-income.

The health care initiative began in 2017 with just a handful of high school interns. It has grown to include opportunities from tenth grade through college, filling more than 65 internships annually. With the advice of its hospital partners, FFE also helped found Health Leadership High School to nurture students’ interest in the field.

This effort comes to a state with a troubled school system and a dearth of work-based learning options. In a lawsuit known as Yazzie-Martinez, which was filed by disadvantaged families and education advocates, a state judge ruled in 2018 that New Mexico was failing in its obligation to provide all its students with an education that would prepare them for college and careers. As evidence, the judge pointed to the state’s high school graduation rate of 70 percent (the lowest in the nation) and low test scores. Most of the state’s students couldn’t read or do math at grade level. Five years after the landmark ruling, and with more than $1 billion in additional state funds poured into schools, students at the heart of the case still struggled, particularly the disabled, English learners, Indigenous children, and the economically disadvantaged.

FFE seeks to give low-income and historically underrepresented teenagers work experience and mentorship that will motivate them in their academic lives and help them find rewarding careers. Too often, its leaders say, the advantages of internships go only to affluent students with connections. FFE’s emphasis on health careers, with their potential for high-wage, in-demand jobs, echoes several other models of collective leadership, including the Indiana University Health High School Fellowship and OneFuture Coachella Valley in California.

Challenges abound. Mike May, director for workforce learning at FFE, says it takes time to persuade employers that teenagers are responsible enough to work with patients. “Some employers are scared to allow under-18 students into the workplace,” he said. “They say ‘How do we know we can trust a 16- and 17-year-old to be in the health care space and work one on one with patients?’ We have to do our very best in educating those folks on interns’ successes and how FFE gives them and their professional mentors ongoing support.”

May says his organization provides orientation, training, and coaching to make internships productive. Students have helped with scheduling, checking insurance documents, bringing patients to treatment rooms, prepping for medical procedures, designing nutrition plans, and contacting patients to make sure they are following up with recommended care. Many interns speak multiple languages and help with translation. Interns help with behavioral health, maternal-fetal medicine, rehabilitation, nutrition, and hospital administration, as well as at specialty clinics.

“Don’t use the word ‘job shadow,’” May added. “It’s all designed so the young person is making a contribution and doing real work. Most employers don’t want just shadowing, it’s an additional burden.”

Arlenda Thompson, who supervised several interns at a family medicine clinic at University of New Mexico Hospital, said she wished she had started getting their help as medical assistants earlier. She recalled one particular intern who “wanted to learn everything. Anything we asked her to do, she did.”

Some barriers to internships are logistical. Many rural students — including some members of the Navajo Nation — live more than an hour from potential employers and need help with transportation, which can be costly. FFE helps arrange busing to worksites when possible, with school districts’ support. “Our role is often convincing them of the value of investing in that way,” May said.

As the initiative seeks to expand, FFE is putting together a study group to explore possible funding structures so they can approach legislators with a proposal to braid state money, employer contributions, and school district funds to boost internships. Currently, FFE’s budget of $5 million comes largely from contracts with the State of New Mexico, from philanthropic funders, and from employers who support the internship program — and it covers technical assistance, student stipends, and the education policy department.

Pamela Blackwell, government relations and communications director at the New Mexico Hospital Association, said X3 internships provide member hospitals with a “proven solution for building a workforce pipeline in urban and rural communities.”

This article is part of a series featuring winners of Profiles in Collective Leadership, an initiative by Carnegie Corporation of New York in partnership with the nonprofit Transcend, that recognizes outstanding local partnerships that educate youth, bolster the workforce, and demonstrate the power of working together. The 10 nonpartisan collaborations in urban, suburban, and rural areas across the country draw on the strengths of local government, education, nonprofit, business, and health care professionals to catalyze socioeconomic mobility and civic engagement in their communities. The 10 recognized partnerships in eight states have been awarded $200,000 grants and will act as exemplars, sharing what they have learned with each other and more broadly.