Nixa High School has a wide variety of club offerings; One of which is a medical based club with the purpose of encouraging students to give back to their communities and compete in a yearly competition against other high schools.
Jason Foster, the biomedical science teacher at NHS, sponsors the club.
“HOSA is a club where students are going to get together to learn more about the medical field,” Foster said. “It used to stand for Heath Occupation Students of America but now it’s just called Future Heath Professionals.”
Foster said even though HOSA has been around at NHS for a couple of years already, this year is the first year students are able to compete.
“[The students are] interested in the medical field and they want to be involved in competitions…” Foster said. “It’s kind of a new thing we’ve tried to get going the last few years at Nixa.”
Students who do well in competition get the chance to advance to the next level.
“From what I understand they will compete at the regional level … and then they’d qualify to the local level and then from there they move on to the international level,” Foster said.
Competitors plan on practicing for the competition both individually and in small groups.
“We’re going to have little small groups where they are going to focus on that particular event; … So they would practice as a group here,” Foster said. “A lot of [the events] are more individualized events so they might practice outside of our group setting.”
Skylar Harris, a senior HOSA officer, said when members aren’t competing, they are fundraising and taking part in community service.
“We want to do something at lunch this year like DECA [Distributive Education Clubs of America] does and we also do concession stands,” Harris said. “[For] community service, we serve people in the hospital community as well as just anybody in the Nixa community.”
Junyoung Choi, also a senior HOSA officer, said members donated handmade items last year.
“We have hosted a Christmas party where we made blankets for foster children while watching movies and having snacks,” Choi said. “We’ve also written [three-dimensional] pop up cards for the elderly.”
HOSA members want to take the community service a step up this year and volunteer at hospitals.
“We may be doing volunteer work at hospitals because we have members this year that have connections to [CoxHealth] and Mercy,” Choi said.
Harris said that the group collectively decided to partake in community service.
“We decided that it would be a good way to show that we really care about the healthcare of our community,” Harris said.
Harris said she finds real value in the work she does in HOSA.
“I think the best value about it is that … people in HOSA care about serving people … and I just think that it teaches a good lesson that not everybody is as fortunate as we are–health wise or just money in general,” Harris said. “We’ve just learned to support those that may have less than us in any way.”
Students who are interested in participating in the community service but not the competition aspect are still welcome to join.
“You have a choice to compete or not,” Harris said. “So, if you just want to go to the club meetings, get more information, and then come to the community service that is absolutely fine with us. … We absolutely welcome anyone who wants to come to the meetings.”