Supplementing Washington’s healthcare workforce will require creative recruiting efforts that attract youths from a wide variety of communities throughout the state. Health leaders discussed some of those efforts at the 2023 Inland Northwest State of Reform Health Policy Conference.
Christina Peters, tribal community health provider project director at the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board (NPAIHB), said the board’s Tribal Community Health Provider Program (TCHPP) is effective in attracting Native Washingtonians to the industry.
The TCHPP works with local tribes to increase access to culturally-appropriate primary healthcare, behavioral healthcare, and oral healthcare by training and employing community health aides, behavioral health aides, dental health aides, and dental therapists, Peters said.
“It’s very much a self-contained wraparound health provider and health education program to wrap around the existing system because there are a lot of ways that’s not working for our communities,” Peters said. “What’s exciting about it for our tribal leaders is that it really targets structural and systemic barriers to help provider education in a meaningful way.”
The TCHPP is an apprenticeship-style education program that teaches students through a tiered-system with different levels of learning requirements, Peters said. It connects tribal youths, tribal health programs, and tribal leaders to break down barriers to education for American Indian and Alaska Native students.
“TCHPP has a level one, a level two, a level three, and a level four. All the way through the training, at every level, you get a professional-wage job. They’re educated in a very narrow scope of practice, working under the supervision of an advanced practitioner, like a doctor or physician’s assistant. They are providing a very basic level of care.”
— Peters
Pasco School District (PSD) Superintendent Michelle Whitney said the district has 19,252 students, and approximately 70 percent receive free/reduced lunch. Some schools there provide free or reduced lunch for 100 percent of their students, and 56 percent of PSD students speak a primary language other than English. Whitney said many PSD students have learning needs similar to those she had when she was a student.
“For kids like me, it’s not enough to just get me through high school,” Whitney said. “I have to have mentors that go beyond that. I don’t have parents with connections that can get me an internship or interview. I have to rely on the system that’s set up to support me.”
PSD students are benefitting from its Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) program, Whitney said. AVID is a college readiness system of support for students to increase their awareness of and access to college and career success. It uses research-based strategies and curriculum to develop students’ critical thinking, literacy, and math skills.
“We also hire career community engagement managers,” Whitney said. “Our community engagement managers’ sole purpose is to look for and connect community partners with our students.”
Whitney noted that voters recently approved a bond for PSD that will fund the construction of a comprehensive high school and a small, innovative high school. PSD plans to open both high schools in August 2025.
“One of the schools will be a 2,000-person high school. The other will be a six-person high school that will be a pathways-based school. Kids who want to go into a pathway like human and health services would go to this school, participate in the content over four years, and leave with an industry partnership through an internship. The goal is they go through those four years and have some college credits or a certificate that will allow them to go straight to work. Or when they graduate, go straight to work with (a) partner they met while they were in our school.”
— Whitney
Marissa Ingalls, senior manager of government relations and external affairs at Coordinated Care, said the organization plans to focus on recruitment efforts for the behavioral health workforce this year.
“We had a lot of conversations with our provider partners, asking them directly where [they] are hiring from,” Ingalls said.