Channeling Our Legacy into Our Future: The Importance of the MCH Pipeline Training Program

The MCH Pipeline Program, created in 2006, creates an important opportunity to identify and encourage undergraduate students from underrepresented populations to consider career paths in maternal and child health. These programs provide didactic instruction, experiential learning, and mentorship to a diverse group of young scholars in order to both enhance their opportunities to pursue graduate or professional degree training in the myriad professions that make up the MCH workforce and to provide them with essential grounding in the history, context and mission of MCH. The leaders of the funded programs meet periodically to exchange ideas; on this occasion, the author was asked to address the group responding to the question “what knowledge or skills are critical for emerging undergraduate scholars?”. Placing these programs squarely in their historical context, her remarks are provided here to encourage others to consider developing programs for undergraduate students who may be enlisted to join the MCH profession.