Founded in 2007, the Women’s Health Science Program and its Oncofertility Saturday Academy (OSA) is designed to engage small cohorts of high school girls from underserved communities in Chicago considering careers in science and medicine. OSA is a weeklong program offering a sequence of challenging, thematic workshops that allow high school girls to explore the fields of reproductive science, cancer biology and oncofertility.  Overall, WHSP has four goals for the high school students:

1. Learn and apply science concepts and scientific processing skills by doing hands-on laboratory and clinical activities
2. Explore the variety of college academic programs and career choices in the fields of science and medicine
3. Develop relationships with graduate and medical students, scientists, doctors and many other healthcare professionals
4. Gain empowerment with women’s health knowledge to make informed, authoritative decisions about personal health and to share with peers, family and communities

In addition, WHSP has one defined goal for the parents/guardians of the high school students: develop awareness, knowledge, and skills to support daughters’ interests and pursuits in science and medicine.  WHSP is an early intervention approach to aggressively combat the attrition of girls from the science pipeline.