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Thomasville High School is set to compete in Orlando this summer at the HOSA International Leadership Conference after coming in 3rd place in Public Health against hundreds of schools in Atlanta at the State Leadership Conference.
      Sierra Perkins, Renderea Perkins, Brenae McCray, Zaria Meeks, Samantha Althoff, and Camryn Williams make up the award-winning team. The team is advanced to the International Leadership Conference by performing a phenomenal skit about how to prevent school shootings. 
     “The process of making it to where we are today was fun. Every Wednesday after school and on Sundays we would meet up, work hard to come up with ideas, and improve the skit to make it better,” said Althoff. 
     “It feels amazing knowing that I’ll be going to ILC this summer after doing Public Health for two years in a row. With all the hard work that we’ve put in to our skit, I honestly felt like we deserved this opportunity,” said Meeks. 
     HOSA, also referred as “Future Health Professionals,” is an organization that gives students the guidance to become future health professionals and experience and knowledge from interacting with other students around the world.
     THS Health Occupations instructor, Barbara Grave de Peralta serves as the advisor of the organization. Peralta expects her students to learn more about the medical field and to learn how to use their social skills to later reflect in their future occupations. 
     “I would like for my students to understand that HOSA isn’t all about the medical field. It is all about meeting new people and learning ideas from other schools that could be used at our school,” said Peralta.
     HOSA is an open organization that anybody can join; students don’t have to be in Peralta’s class. This helps out students that are interested in a future in the health profession, but not be able to schedule into Peralta’s class.  
    The organization starts off each year going to conferences such as the Fall Leadership Conference and the State Leadership Conference to learn, compete against other schools, and simply enjoying meeting new people from around Georgia.  Students choose an event that they would like to compete in and gain knowledge from of their event. Part of the experience is knowing how competitive these competitions can really get. Events at the State Leadership Conference are: Public Health, HOSA Bowl, and Health Care Display. Throughout the school year, members work hard after school in Peralta’s room to work on their events and practice them in front of their peers for better judgment.
     “I participate in HOSA because I love the experience of learning something new every year and getting prepared for the competitions,” said Malaysia Baker.