In partnership with Workforce Santa Cruz County, the Health
Improvement Partnership of Santa Cruz County (HIP) aims to build, strengthen and diversify the Santa Cruz County healthcare workforce with qualified individuals who can best support and provide health services to the community.
Our Goals
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Increase opportunities for Santa Cruz County residents to advance in health professions
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Align and expand education and training through pipeline programs, work-based learning, and continued professional development
Get Involved
HIP and Workforce Santa Cruz County are focused on bolstering the health workforce and health care delivery by establishing a Santa Cruz County Health Workforce Council. The council is structured to reflect a comprehensive representation of healthcare workforce issues, with the purpose of mobilizing leaders and organizations to collaborate and invest in local planning for the future of the healthcare workforce in our county. We are seeking interested employers and training partners to join this effort. This effort is funded by the Santa Cruz County Government Board of Supervisors.
Hayley Mears, MA
Workforce Development Program Manager
&
María Estela Jerezano
Program Assistant
SANTA CRUZ COUNTY
HEALTH WORKFORCE COUNCIL
Health Workforce Council Tracks
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Behavioral Health & Health Social Workers
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Community Health Workers
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Medical Assistants
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Nurses
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Physicians: Pediatrician & Family Medicine
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Surgical Technicians
June 22nd, 2022
September 28th, 2022
December 21st, 2022
March 22nd, 2023
QUARTERLY HEALTH WORKFORCE
COUNCIL MEETINGS
Health Workforce Track Champions
Holly Hughes, LCSW, is the champion for the Behavioral Health & Health Social Workers Workgroup. She is the Principal for HH & Co. and the Chief Program Officer of Janus of Santa Cruz.
Adrienne Saxton, MPH, CHES, is the champion for the Community Health Workers Workgroup. She is a Health Science faculty member at Cabrillo College.
Ashlyn James, CMA (AAMA), is the champion for the Medical Assistants Workgroup. She is the Medical Assisting Program Director and Department Chair at Cabrillo College.
Cal Gordon, MD, is the champion for the Physicians: Pediatrician & Family Medicine Workgroup. He is the county's Deputy Health Officer and CMS Medical Consultant.
April LoFranco, BSN, RN, and Eric Conrad, BSN, RN, CEN, are the co-champions for the Nurses Workgroup. April is an Associate Faculty Internship and Residency Liaison at Dominican Hospital Telemetry Registered Nurse and an instructor in the Cabrillo College Nursing Program. Eric is the Interim Chief Nursing Officer at Dignity Health - Dominican Hospital.
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Past Partnerships
HIP began communication with the county workforce development boards of Santa Cruz, Monterey, San Luis Obispo, and Santa Barbara, in 2016 to identify gaps in our local healthcare workforce that could be addressed by the Central Coast Slingshot Initiative, a regional grant program to develop mid- to high-skilled professionals, alleviate workforce shortages, promote income mobility, and accelerate economic growth on the Central Coast. With the awarded grant, HIP worked in collaboration with local partners to identify a lack of community health workers in the region performing public health outreach and care coordination. As a result, HIP teamed up with Cabrillo College to establish the county’s first community health worker certificate track.
HIP supports the development of a strong, knowledgeable workforce through programs that enhance the skills of all health workers. In 2017, HIP began offering an Institute for Health Care Communication workshop titled, The Empathy Effect (EE) Countering Bias to Improve Health Outcomes. The goal of the workshop is to enable health center staff to improve their empathy conveyance skills and is based on the ideas that empathy is healing, and judgment is harmful; vulnerable populations experience greater harm by judgment and lack of empathy, and we all have judgments, and we can learn to mitigate them.
Sponsored by Kaiser Permanente, the goal of the Safety Net Workforce Diversification project is to improve access to training and education for underrepresented populations in the healthcare workforce by providing training, opportunities for peer learning, tools, and resource sharing that support Safety Net Clinic Coalition (SNCC) member organizations. In addition, this project aims to provide SNCC leadership with training and best practices concerning the titles, roles, training curriculum, recruitment, and retention strategies for non-licensed staff (e.g., community health workers, health navigators, and health coaches).
WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT
