UH Manoa
Student Life
In the highly competitive world of pre-medicine, nine students chose collaboration over rivalry and fiercely supported each other throughout twelve months of preparing to enter the John A. Burns School of Medicine through the ʻImi Hoʻōla Post-Baccalaureate Program. These new ʻImi graduates were recently celebrated by their closest supporters, mentors and newfound JABSOM ʻohana.
For Regan Stradtmann-Carvalho, she notes that it was especially difficult being one out of only two in the class that was living on Oʻahu without the in-person support of her immediate family during the highly rigorous program. However, she grew close to those in her cohort. “You know, my peers have become like my sisters, they really helped me through,” said the Kamehameha Schools alumna.
“My childhood home was in Volcano Village, Hawaiʻi– that is pretty much as rural as you can get on the Big Island,” Stradtmann-Carvalho said, about living an hour away from the nearest large hospital. She witnessed her parents struggle with constantly finding new primary care providers because of a high turnover rate as well as family members that had to fly back and forth to Oʻahu for medical care.
However, these unique childhood experiences, along with a father who worked as a local psychiatric nurse, inspired her calling to medicine.
“He was one of the nurses on that unit where he could connect with everyone and he always said it’s because he’s a Hilo boy. So, he’s a Hilo boy taking care of his own community,” said Stradtmann-Carvalho. She hopes to follow in her fatherʻs footsteps and connect on a deeper level with future patients being a “Hilo girl,” herself, that wants to return to the Big Island someday as a nurturing and compassionate health care provider.
The focus of the ʻImi Hoʻōla Program (Hawaiian for “those who seek to heal”), is to produce physicians and improve the overall health care of residents in Hawaiʻi and the Pacific. Successfully completing the program comes with the reward of matriculation into JABSOM, bringing these aspiring doctors one step closer to reaching their goals.
Mililani High School alumna Taylor Gomban says serving the community in a health care setting has been a dream of hers since she was a sophomore in high school. “I’ve always enjoyed the sciences, " said Gomban,”... I’ve always wanted to make people smile and improve their quality of life.”
It was through her days volunteering at the Queen’s Medical Center that it really clicked for Gomban, solidifying the desire to become a doctor. As a first-generation pre-medical student during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Gomban found herself without any connections to physicians and hardly any resources to navigate the pathway to medical school. “I had to do a lot of putting myself out of my comfort zone, cold-emailing and basically trying to seek out mentorship in any form that I could,” said Gomban.
Gomban expressed gratitude as she reflected on starting her journey to medical school with no mentors, to now, being surrounded by them as she grasped her admission letter to JABSOM.
“They say ‘Once an ‘Imi, always an ‘Imi,’” said Gomban. “And I know that I’m joining such a great community of future physicians and current physicians that have all gone through the same thing. So we all know the difficult times but also the most joyous times of being in the ‘Imi program and I’m so very grateful for my amazing cohort,” she added.
In fact, some of the instant mentors to this crop of ʻImi graduates were the previous ʻImi graduates of 2024.
“It (the program) was as tough as they made it out to be but they really tried to hammer that into us so, luckily, I wasnʻt surprised by how difficult it was,” said Stradtmann-Carvalho. “And now I’m on the other side, you know, I can smile and laugh about it. But it really is a challenging program and I think it sets us up very well to succeed in the future.”
Despite a demanding year of midterms, finals and test after test, this cohort found glimmers of encouragement and camaraderie throughout the year. They knew they would learn the knowledge and skills needed to succeed in medical school but didnʻt anticipate gaining invaluable pillars of support: an ʻImi family.
“Some of my favorite moments, I would say, we never missed a birthday celebration for our classmates,” said Gomban. “We always got cake and we always sang.”
They ended the year with another reason to celebrate: Becoming the newest members of the JABSOM MD Class of 2029. And that’s the icing on the cake.
