We run short, structured cycles that turn opinions into evidence-backed briefs — on healthcare, ethics, and the law.
HEPS is a student-led nonprofit working at the intersection of healthcare, ethics, and public policy. We pick one issue every two to four months — something real, something contested, something that affects people at the community, city, or societal level — and we go deep on it.
Members are divided into teams — each assigned a different lens: medical research, legal framework, ethical considerations, policy landscape. Over six weeks, teams research their angle, participate in workshops on policy writing and public speaking, and collaborate to build a complete picture of the issue. No one is expected to walk in as an expert. That’s the point — HEPS is where you become one.
Each cycle culminates in a student-written policy brief — synthesized from the team’s findings and reviewed by our advisory board before being submitted to the relevant decision-makers. A city council. A school board. A state representative. A local health organization. The work is real, and it goes somewhere.
Every cycle also ends with a public-facing component — a debate, a campaign, a presentation — because research means nothing if it can’t be communicated. Our goal isn’t just to understand hard problems. It’s to move the needle on them.
We’re based in Folsom, California, and we’re just getting started.
HEPS exists to give students a real seat at the policy table. We train young researchers and advocates to study contested questions in healthcare, law, and ethics — and to produce the kind of rigorous, accessible work that actually moves decision-makers.
We believe the people most affected by a policy should have a voice in shaping it, and that’s especially true of the next generation.
A generation of students who don’t just learn about public policy — they help write it. We envision HEPS chapters in schools everywhere, each running policy cycles tied to their communities.
Together, they’ll contribute to a shared archive of student-authored briefs that shape how healthcare and ethics are governed for decades to come.
Every cycle pulls the same three threads together — research, public debate, and direct advocacy — into a single published brief.
Small teams dig into legal, medical, ethical, economic, and community-impact angles. Each one writes a section of the shared brief, reviewed weekly by the advisory board.
Week 7 goes public — structured debates, awareness campaigns, social media, and community events. The brief gets stress-tested in front of real audiences before it’s finalized.
In week 8, the finished brief is submitted to the decision-makers who can act on it, and added to the HEPS public archive so any community member or official can cite the work.
Law and policy shape every part of our lives — who gets protected, who gets heard, who gets left out. But most people have never been given a real reason to care, let alone a way to get involved. That disconnect bothers me.
I want to be a lawyer someday. Not for any one community, but for people — because I believe everyone deserves to be protected and respected regardless of who they are or where they come from. I'm still figuring out exactly what that looks like — humanitarian law, international law — but what I know for certain is that I don't want to wait until I have a degree to start.
Everything starts somewhere. HEPS is my somewhere.
I started this because there's a wall between young people and the decisions being made about their lives — and nobody ever told them it was there. Policy shapes who gets care, who gets justice, who gets a voice. But it's treated like something distant, complicated, meant for other people. HEPS exists to tear that wall down. To show students that they're not too young, that their voices count, and that real change starts long before you have a title or a platform.