Design & Launch of the Program:

In 2025/26, the Partnership will study the feasibility of creating a healthcare career pipeline, custom-designed to meet the unique needs of healthcare employers in San Luis Obispo and northern Santa Barbara counties. For this project, the Partnership will collaborate with Health Career Connection (HCC) to design and test a tiered healthcare career pathway program. The tiered pathway will be built on HCC’s proven model implemented in other regions, which emphasizes recruiting students who are from disinvested communities, underrepresented backgrounds, or are first generation college students.
 

The HCC model includes a paid,10-week, full-time summer healthcare internship, professional development, and mentoring for college students. This project will assess how to best adapt HCC’s proven model to meet the specific needs of local healthcare employers. It will enable planning, curriculum development, and testing of the components of the tiered pathway program. In addition, this study will evaluate the effectiveness of adding coordinated linkages with other components of the pipeline. Possibilities include: 1) Expanding the internship program to offer two versions (i.e., a 10-week full-time program and a 16-week part-time program focusing on community-college students interested in nursing, pre-nursing, or high demand, high-quality technical health occupations); 2) adding career exploration fairs to expose high school students to occupations, training, and education programs; and 3) offering additional supportive services including mentoring, exploration of advanced educational options, and connections with employers for job placement.
 

To assess the feasibility of the custom-designed pipeline, this project will include piloting the program framework, format, and curriculum to test its effectiveness and scalability. We anticipate that this pilot project will be called the “SLO Healthcare Career Pathway Program.”

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The ultimate objective of this project is to increase the number of students, from disinvested communities, who choose healthcare careers aligned with area workforce needs, obtain needed education and training, secure high quality local jobs, and access professional development opportunities to support their career advancement, resilience, and economic mobility.