After 50 years, DeBakey High School remains 'fundamental pipeline' for aspiring health care workers
Lots of high school students experience a moment that shapes the rest of their lives. For Dr. Ronald Cotton, it was the day he observed his first open-heart surgery.

Cotton can still recall the sight of a heart beating in a patient’s chest nearly 25 years after that surgery at the Texas Medical Center. It was the first time the Houston native could see himself following in the footsteps of his uncle, who was his mentor and a general surgeon. And it was a moment he was unlikely to experience anywhere but DeBakey High School for Health Professions.

“It was just this amazing, ‘a-ha’ moment,” said Cotton, a 1998 graduate who is now a transplant surgeon and an associate professor at Baylor College of Medicine. “I’d never seen anything like that before.”

Cotton is among thousands of students who have walked the halls at DeBakey since it opened in 1972 as the first high school geared toward health professions in the United States. Over the past five decades it has earned a reputation as one of the top high schools in the nation. Many of its alumni have gone on to successful careers in medicine, including at the nearby Texas Medical Center.

The high school celebrated its 50th anniversary last month at a Science Symposium, which featured a gala and presentations from 50 alumni. Many of those alumni credited their success to their time at DeBakey, where they were exposed to an array of possible careers in medicine when they were teenagers.

“You show just the slightest interest in the medical field, and this high school was just built, and this curriculum was just built, to really grow it exponentially,” said Dr. Lisa Wofford, a 1999 graduate who is now the chief of anesthesiology at Ben Taub Hospital.

Like Cotton, Wofford also has vivid memories of shadowing TMC doctors as a high school student. Her main rotation was at Ben Taub, where she’s now been working for 10 years.

“I have very vivid memories — and this was like 30 years ago – of that rotation,” she said. “It was so important to help me determine the path I wanted to go down.”

DeBakey was originally called the Houston High School for Health Professions when it started as a partnership with the Houston Independent School District and Baylor College of Medicine. Its goal was to integrate health-focused subjects into a traditional high school curriculum, to increase interest in health professions and make them more accessible. It was renamed in 1996 to honor Michael E. DeBakey, the renowned surgeon and former president of Baylor.

When it opened, just 45 students attended the high school classes at Baylor. Today about 900 students take classes at the $67 million campus that opened in 2017 on the edge of the Texas Medical Center.

The building has changed, but the high school has maintained its reputation for rigorous academic standards. More than 1,000 students apply for admission each year, and they are chosen through a matrix score — which considers grades and other factors — and a lottery. They are also required to take a health science and math “readiness” assessment.

Adjusting to DeBakey can be tough, even for students who were among the brightest at their middle schools. Marrthella Diaz loves spending time with her friends, but she realized early in her freshman year that she needed to prioritize studying in order to thrive at DeBakey.

But Diaz, now a senior, also knew early on that she was in the right place. As a freshman, she would see upperclassmen in scrubs or personal protective equipment, and she knew she was surrounded by others who shared her interests.

“I realized that a lot of people here, like me, had a passion for improving people’s lives, and making people’s lives better,” said Diaz, who plans to pursue a career in public policy and focus on health care issues.

The fact that so many students share common interests and goals tends to foster a sense of community among them, current DeBakey High School Principal Jesse Herrera said.

“They feed off each other,” Herrera said. “They’ll see their classmates do something and they’ll want to do it, too. They want to achieve and get everything they can out of their high school experience.”

At DeBakey, typical high school classes like English, math, and history are taken alongside health science courses that focus on topics like medical terminology, patient care and dentistry. Students analyze blood and urine samples; make a patient’s bed; learn dental charting; conduct an STD test; and learn CPR, among other things.

Angel Perez, another current senior, knew in middle school that he wanted to pursue a career in medicine. The feeling of putting on scrubs for the first time for one of his classes was thrilling, he said.

“It really brought that dream to life,” said Perez, who wants to be a cardiovascular surgeon. “It was like, ‘Man, I’m doing this.’”

The success of DeBakey’s students is also a testament to its teachers, alumni and current students said. Wofford remembers how her teachers — many of whom had worked in a clinical setting — prepared her for what she’d experience while shadowing TMC physicians.

Diaz, Perez and their classmates missed out on opportunities to shadow at TMC due to ongoing COVID-19 restrictions, but they’ve gone on trips to nearby medical research labs. They also have opportunities to network with TMC physicians and DeBakey alumni, including at the recent 50th anniversary gala.

“I’ve been emailing cardiovascular surgeons, non-stop, for about two years already,” Perez said. “Recently I’ve been invited to a few lectures and online Zoom meetings with them. And I’m starting to build relationships with them.”

Both Cotton and Wofford feel their experiences at DeBakey set them up for success later in life. Cotton graduated at the top of his class and was accepted into the Houston Premedical Academy, an eight-year scholarship program where students attend the University of Houston and receive a provisional acceptance to Baylor College of Medicine out of high school.

Wofford found the rigorous academic standards at DeBakey honed her work ethic. She also attended UH, then went to medical school at New York University.

“Honestly, college was a piece of cake compared to high school,” she said. “It was because of what I learned in high school, and the foundation that high school gave me.”

While many DeBakey alumni have gone on to successful careers in medicine, Cotton believes the school’s legacy is in the fact that it opens the door to those health professions. Without DeBakey, many of its students might not have those opportunities, unless they had a family member who also worked in health care.

Cotton knows the effect that being exposed to those types of careers can have on a teenager, having experienced it himself as a DeBakey student.

“It is this fundamental pipeline —this fundamental opportunity for access,” Cotton said. "How many people know all the careers that exist in medicine from a high school age? Being exposed to it in a hospital setting, even if it’s a brief exposure — that can be transformative.”