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HEALTH PROFESSIONS INITIATIVEIn early May, The Trust announced the grantees of its $9.4 million, three-year Health Professions initiative. Effective 2005-2008, 22 grantees will receive on average $50,000 to $125,000 annually to address the severe shortage of health care professionals statewide. Grantees represent hospitals, clinics, universities, colleges, community-based organizations and community health care foundations. According to HRSA, the Health Resources Service Administration, Colorado currently has an 11% shortage of nurses - twice the national average - with a 31% shortage projected for the state by 2020 if the problem is not seriously addressed. With significant increases in demand being caused by an increasing and aging population, supply shortages exist in both urban and rural areas for health professionals across all disciplines, including primary, dental and mental health professionals and pharmacists. Programs developed under this initiative will focus on increasing education, training and advancement opportunities for individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds and rural areas; increasing the number of individuals in health professions in Colorado in all disciplines; stimulating partnerships between community-based organizations, schools and health professions; and supporting certification of foreign-born health care professionals now living in Colorado. In addition to the grant awards, The Trust will also provide grantees with networking opportunities to share lessons learned and with technical assistance to help strengthen the effectiveness of their projects. $1.4 million of this initiative is earmarked for the Colorado Rural Health Center (CRHC). Since 2000, The Trust has provided funding to CRHC in support of the Colorado Rural Outreach Project (CROP), which focuses on recruiting and retaining primary health care practitioners, and provides loan repayment programs and scholarship opportunities for students and providers in rural Colorado communities. This new funding to CRHC will expand CROP programs to include mental, dental and pharmacy health professions programs. An independent evaluation of the Health Professions Initiative will be conducted by the Denver-based Center for Research Strategies to determine if the number of health professionals in Colorado increases as a result of this initiative. The evaluation will also explore and document the barriers and facilitators to increasing the numbers of health professionals in Colorado communities. As part of the evaluation, the Colorado Health Institute will develop a web-based database that will contain information related to health professions in the state that will enable tracking changes over time in all counties in the state. "The trickle down theory that a meaningful percentage of health professionals trained in urban areas will practice in rural areas doesn't hold water. The same factors of rural life - isolation, outdated technology, a quiet lifestyle and "being needed" - can be viewed as pros or cons of building a career in an outlying place. We need to offer things like housing for medical students and residents, and loan repayment incentives, and we need to develop and maintain relationships with them that encourage them to stay and practice in rural areas." Denise Denton, Executive Director of the Colorado Rural Health Center, Trust Learning Lunch, May 3, 2005 ### "We've got to replace competition with collaboration. We need to understand the communities in which we operate, and we need to be nimble to make changes that are appropriate for the norms of each individual community." |
