Empowered Aging Innovation Award - Healthcare Career Pathway Program

Healthcare Career Pathway is a collaborative partnership in Contra Costa County with Empowered Aging, Opportunity Junction, Mt. Diablo Adult Education, and several skilled nursing facility partners that address the critical shortage of qualified healthcare workers. Over the last three years, the Healthcare Career Pathway team has focused on human-centered design processes, actively engaging older adults and their caregivers in developing and crafting this program. They have also been leading the collaborative to provide robust training and comprehensive wrap-around support to enable students with addressable barriers to enter the allied healthcare field by earning a Certified Nursing Assistant certification and embarking on a new career.

The Healthcare Career Pathway roots can be traced back to 2017, when the John Muir Community Health Fund, both funder, and convener, recognized that each of these organizations from disparate parts of the landscape could come together to collectively forge an impactful program with a multiprong approach.

For us, the need for Healthcare Career Pathway comes directly from long-term care resident complaints over many years. A case that exemplified this shares the story of a resident who had lost considerable mobility and was contracted in pain. Through intervention, a long-term care ombudsman was able to negotiate 20 minutes of daily assistance from a Restorative Nursing Assistant who helped this resident regain mobility and range of motion. Due to lack of staffing, the RNA was eventually pulled back into regular rotation as a CNA, and the resident regressed. This type of retraction of staffing and lack of appropriate care was echoed across the long-term care spectrum. At the same time, there was no accessible on-ramp into healthcare professions, particularly for non-traditional students and those facing barriers. There was a clear need for a program that could provide education and workforce development with vital holistic support.

Since the first cohort of students in 2019, the program has been highly successful and impactful, being recognized as a proven program for replication in California’s Master Plan on Aging Local Playbook. When COVID-19 hit, the collaborative made even more adaptations gaining approval from the CA Dept. of Public Health for online training. They reconfigured the curriculum to accommodate students training at different times of the day and helped students sustain learning until testing centers reopened.

Healthcare Career Pathway is a program that actively seeks students who may not be successful in traditional education settings. We provide them with comprehensive support that includes food during class and on the weekends, transportation assistance, financial aid counseling, educational support, and tools—really anything they need to succeed.

Our students are taking 303 hours of training—lectures, labs, and testing, which is double the traditionally required programming, and they are placed in a facility within the first week of training to get them accustomed to the landscape.

Our program is one that is truly person-centered in both our philosophy regarding resident care, but also how we see education for our students.

Thus far, Healthcare Career Pathway has graduated four classes, 60 students, 88% of whom are employed in the long-term care community, and 69% who are eager to embark on additional training opportunities.

Based on the program’s success to date and the high demand for both the supportive education as well as facilities’ need for person-centered care workers, the legislature and governor included the Healthcare Career Pathway in their 2021 budget. This called for $5 million to be invested in program expansion. Empowered Aging will be leading the charge to pilot this program in other areas of California. As Healthcare Career Pathway moves forward, the goal is to bring on additional like-minded partners who employ person-centered care philosophies, restorative justice principles, and believe in dignity and rights of older adults. At the same time, they must also believe in creating opportunity for people who are seeking to change the course of their lives and their career. Ultimately creating multiple pathways of change for the future.

Thank you to The SCAN Foundation for this recognition and honorable mention as a part of the Innovation Award. We’re thrilled to be fighting alongside you for all older adults.

For more information on the Healthcare Career Pathway program, please visit EmpoweredAging.org/Healthcare-Career-Pathway.