The California Statewide Area Health Education Center (AHEC) Program, housed and administered at the UCSF Fresno Department of Family and Community Medicine, is celebrating 50 years of recruitment, training, and retention of health professionals for under resourced communities.
California AHEC was established in 1972 as part of the National AHEC Program developed by Congress. The AHEC mission in California is to improve access to quality health care for underserved populations in urban and rural communities through academic and community partnerships. Health care workforce development is crucial in California, especially in the San Joaquin Valley, which has the second-lowest rate of primary care physicians per 100,000 population in the state.
California AHEC receives federal funding through state initiatives and from the Bureau of Health Workforce under the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). UCSF Fresno administers the funding and subcontracts with a network of 12 AHEC centers, serving 58 counties, located in under resourced areas of the state to provide population-based education and training for students and health professionals. Each center, in collaboration with their regional advisory boards develops programs to respond to specific health care workforce needs of the community. The AHEC centers conduct their programs through many educational, clinical and community partnerships.
“California is a large, diverse state with health care workforce shortages and challenges that are as varied as the state’s geography. Addressing disparate workforce needs requires a collaborative spirit that AHEC has engendered to achieve,” said Ivan Gomez, MD, program director and principal investigator of AHEC, and Chief of the UCSF Fresno Department of Family and Community Medicine. “Statewide, each AHEC center has developed activities that respond to individual community health workforce priorities and opportunities, all the while engaging with each other to share ideas and best practices. We, at the AHEC Program Office at UCSF Fresno, are proud to help facilitate our partners in their efforts to improve access to quality and culturally competent health care to people in under resourced regions of the state.”
In the past three fiscal years (2018-21), California AHEC has provided professional education and support to 16,318 participants; health careers promotion and preparation to 15,893; and 1,922 in rotations, clerkships, internships and community experiences.
The AHEC Program Office coordinates the implementation of our program objectives through our 12 centers. The program office provides technical assistance, webinar development, and promotes collaboration with our state partners. “We collaborate with our AHEC centers to provide the training and education that are needed in our regions,” said JD Garza, AHEC Associate Program Director.
For example, the Central Coast AHEC, housed at the non-profit Health Projects Center (HPC) in Santa Cruz, California, focuses on increasing the number of health professionals trained to care for the state’s rapidly growing geriatric population. “Our nonprofit is dedicated to keeping older adults and people with disabilities safe at home,” said John Beleutz, MPH, Central Coast AHEC Director. Central Coast AHEC trains Family Medicine residents from Natividad Medical Center in Salinas, California, and nursing students from Cabrillo College in Aptos, California, through clinical and community rotations, teaching and simulations. Health professionals from area community health centers also receive continuing education in chronic disease care and geriatrics.
“Our biggest pipeline for new social workers at the Health Projects Center is our internship program that is in part supported by AHEC to allow us to give those folks experience. Many of them are bilingual, bicultural, from diverse backgrounds, and we’re retaining them,” Beleutz said.
The Central Valley AHEC, hosted by the Central Valley Health Network (CVHN), is focused on collaborative workforce development activities to address member health centers’ needs in the areas of recruitment, retention and on-going staff development. CVHN is comprised of 14 Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), which serve 21 counties in California. FQHCs serve people of all ages, races and ethnicities and people without insurance.
“Workforce development has long been one of our primary strategic initiatives,” said CVHN Chief Operation Officer and Central Valley AHEC Director Mary Renner.
All 12 AHEC centers in California participate in the AHEC Scholars Program in Community Health, which launched in 2018 for high-potential health professions students in the health professions to experience primary care with an emphasis on community health and interdisciplinary practice in medically under resourced communities. “We have grown AHEC Scholars over the last three years. We have been able to enroll over 530 students to date,” Garza said.
UCSF San Joaquin Valley Program in Medical Education (SJV PRIME) participates in the AHEC Scholars Program, serving as mentors and role models for youths in the Central Valley. SJV PRIME is a tailored track at UCSF for medical students who are committed to ensuring high quality, diverse and well distributed medical care to improve the health of communities and individuals in the San Joaquin Valley.
Amitoj Singh, an SJV PRIME student from Fresno, said participating in the AHEC Scholars Program allowed him to gain additional knowledge and experience in underserved settings. “During my involvement, I was able to educate community members in the Central Valley about chronic health issues like diabetes, engage in research on the relationship between COVID-19 and asthma, and create mental health resources that were distributed at Camarena Health (a Madera-based Community Health Center) Fairs. To all health professional students who are interested in working with marginalized communities, I highly recommend participating in this program.”
The AHEC Scholars Program has been successful for the South Bay AHEC said Jesse Tarango, South Bay AHEC Director. The South Bay AHEC is hosted by the Community Health Partnership (CHP), a community clinic consortium of 10 community health centers with 41 sites serving Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. AHEC Scholars are placed in the health centers and three graduates of the AHEC Scholars Program were hired by health centers this past year. “We’re getting great feedback from the CEOs,” Tarango said.
The Central Valley AHEC has expanded its AHEC Scholars Program to include high school students. “Even though initially the idea of AHEC Scholars was for medical students, as the program evolved across the country, people realized it really needed to be broader than that,” Renner said. “We have a couple of high schools that we work with in Madera around certified nursing assistant programs, and a high school in the Sacramento area, we work with on its community health worker program.”
The California AHEC has five partners that provide the latest information about health professional workforce development and share information about available resources with AHEC centers,” Garza said.
The partners are California Primary Care Association; California State Office of Rural Health; California Department of Health Care Access and Information (HCAI); California Community Colleges – Workforce & Economic Development Division; California State University Office of the Chancellor.
“For example, through its partnership with the California State Office of Rural Health, California AHEC has received a five-year grant for workforce resiliency. As a result, AHEC centers across the state will be able to provide services to address burnout among health profession students and health professionals. Burnout is a primary factor in health professionals leaving their field and we want to mitigate that by providing resources with the goal of having them stay on board with the community health center consortia they are working with,” Garza said.
“The California AHEC is grateful for its partners and the network of centers,” Garza said. “Through collaboration we are achieving the goal of recruiting, training and retaining health professionals. And that is the overarching mission of the California AHEC.”
