Update: Health Care Professions Merit Badge

 

The Health Care Professions merit badge debuts, replacing the Medicine merit badge.

Boy Scouts of America is introducing the Health Care Professions merit badge, a STEM-focused, career-oriented badge designed to introduce young people to the roles that health care professionals play in the delivery of health care. Within the vast and vital universe of health care, there are pharmacists and phlebotomists, optometrists and orthotists, sonographers and speech therapists — to name just a half-dozen of the many specialists who keep us healthy and happy.  In fact, these professionals work in a field so vast that simply calling it all “Medicine” doesn’t quite cut it. 
 
Scouts who have begun work on the Medicine merit badge may continue working on it until they are finished or turn 18. 
After Dec. 31, 2021, Scouts may not begin working on the Medicine merit badge and should instead work on the Health Care Professions badge.


Hard-copy editions of the Health Care Professions merit badge pamphlet should be available now.

The design of the Health Care Professions merit badge emblem will not change from that of the Medicine merit badge emblem.