Kettering College able to start public health workforce program thanks to federal grant
The U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration has awarded a $1.8 million grant to Kettering College to help grow the public health workforce in the region.
A $1.8 million federal grant will help Kettering College start a program to grow the public health workforce in Ohio. The grant money comes from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration.
U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) was quoted by Dayton Daily News about the reason for the award, saying, “Communities across Ohio have stepped up to meet the challenges of this pandemic, and our public health institutions and workers have been at the heart of those efforts. This investment will allow Kettering to expand its community health worker training programs and strengthen the public health workforce and services, particularly in places where quality care is often too far away or too hard to access.”
The grant money will be spent by Kettering College on training and apprenticeship programs on the main campus of Kettering Health. Community health workers will be provided with community outreach, with the goal of improving access to care in the region for those who need it.
The grant money has come from the American Rescue Plan Act, which has so far divvied out $12 billion for the healthcare industry around the country.
Dr. Paula Reams, who serves as the Dean of Nursing at Kettering College, spoke on the community's healthcare workers, saying, “It’s out in the community. It’s made to connect the community with health care. It’s to take people who know that community very well and know who to communicate with so that they can get people to the health care they need—not just when they’re already ill, but to prevent them from getting ill is our aim.”
While the Ohio Board of Nursing oversees the process of awarding credentials to community health workers, those same workers tend to be more focused on general public health, instead of providing health care to patients directly.
Dr. Reams continued on this point, saying, “They don’t have a lot of background in taking care of people that are sick,” Reams said. “It’s more to know what is in the community, where it is, and how to connect people to that care.” Dr. Reams also noted that healthcare workers are able to provide basic healthcare for the purpose of assessing a person’s healthcare needs, but largely they exist to lead the community to more specifically focused health care providers.
According to the American Public Health Association, community health workers are frontline public health workers. They tend to work in urban and rural areas to meet the specific health challenges in those areas.
Therefore, community health workers can be scattered throughout a region into places like senior citizen centers, public health departments, schools, and more to work with community members and monitor a community’s health directly.
Dr. Reams stated it simply: “They can be anywhere in the community where people are.”
The people organizing Kettering’s grant-funded program are looking to train community health workers who are currently living in the community they will serve once they complete their studies.
The manager of grants administration at Kettering Health Pamela Jacques explained this focus, saying, “That familiarity breeds trust with the community, and that trust means they can impart information and it will be taken serious.”
Dr. Reams spoke on this as well, saying, “If you go into a community and you don’t know the community and you don’t know the people in the community, you may have this great idea of reducing hypertension … but you’re not going to get anywhere unless you go to the right person.”
The American Public Health Association has also noted that it is important to have a relationship of trust between the community health workers and the people in the region they serve, allowing them to better provide access to social and health services, and improve the quality of care that those community members need. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute also notes that having community health workers in a region improves access to health care services, better understanding and communication between patients and health care providers, increased health screenings, a reduced need for specialist and emergency services, improved adherence to health recommendations, and more.
The $1.8 million grant funding will be spent on hiring a coordinator who will assist in the development of the curriculum for the Community Health Worker Training Program. The program is anticipated to be a three to six month course. Money from the grant may also go to breaking down barriers that may keep potential students from taking the course, such as transportation and child care costs.
Pamela Jacques talked about the importance of breaking down these barriers for students, and how that will in turn help break down barriers in care for the people those students will eventually serve: “If we really want to get people from the communities we want to serve, they’re going to have the same barriers the people that we want to go into the community and help. Today, we know that a lot of the social determinants of health decide what we can do and how far we can go with things, and those social determinants of health have to be addressed for people to do things like participate in probably a three-month program and then be able to go on and get certified and go get a job in the community.”
The need for a Community Health Worker Training Program was underscored by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Dr. Reams. “It’s been a need for a long time,” she said.
Kettering College plans for the new program to begin in March or April of 2023. Potential students who are interested in learning more about this program can contact Jessica Allen at Kettering College by email at jessica.allen@kc.edu
More information about Kettering College can be found at the school’s website.