"We are very excited to be providing support for such an important social initiative. We believe Brightside Trust Pathways to Medicine projects will help to offer more opportunities for disadvantaged young students and help address issues surrounding access to medical professions," said Chris Brinsmead, Marketing Company President, AstraZeneca UK Ltd.

One of the key projects AstraZeneca is funding is a pioneering Mentor Accreditation Programme, which will be developed in close collaboration with the National Health Service (NHS) University. This programme is the first of its kind by offering structured on-going training and input for mentors, with assessment to demonstrate that certain core standards have been reached. The programme will be suitable for both face-to-face mentoring and e-mentoring, and upon successful completion of the process each programme will receive a kitemark from the NHS University. Details of the assessment and accreditation process will be available in early 2004.

In addition to the Mentor Accreditation Programme, another Pathways to Medicine project is the development of an E-mentoring Facility. This innovative online community portal will supplement face-to-face support and increase access to educational resources for participants.

The Brightside Trust plans to work with several university medical schools to provide mentoring and outreach programmes for disadvantaged students in geographical catchment areas around each institution. The programmes to be supported are at Guy's, King's & St Thomass School of Medicine in London, University of Manchester, University of Edinburgh, University of Wales at Cardiff Medical School.

According to recent widening participation research, UK society has had a long standing problem in the consistent under achievement of many people from socially disadvantaged backgrounds, mainly due to lack of support and opportunity. This has created a particular issue for modern medical practice, in that most disadvantaged communities do not have access to doctors with a similar background.

"With financial support from AstraZeneca, the Brightside Trust's mission is to redress this situation by widening participation to the medical and healthcare professions. We believe that, over the next 3 years, exposure to our outreach activities will raise the aspirations of 12-15,000 underprivileged young people.  Our goal is to have up to 500 students mentored and placed into higher education by 2005," said John Berry, Chairman, Brightside Trust.

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