Report Highlights Urgent Challenges, Potential Opportunities For Public Health In The IE

The Inland Empire is the fastest growing region in the state, but a report published late last year raises concerns about the “significant pressure” on the region’s healthcare system.

According to the Inland Public Health Workforce Report, physicians in the Inland Empire are seeing 60% more patients than physicians elsewhere in the state and data show that occupations such as nurses, community health workers (CHWs) and epidemiologists are “particularly vulnerable to shortages over the next five years.”

“Without immediate intervention, these gaps will leave our communities exposed and unprepared for the future,” the report, published by the Inland Health Professions Consortium (IHPC), said.

But the shortages are not what Diana Fox, executive director for Reach Out, the parent organization of the IHPC, said she wants people to focus on when looking at the report.

“I don’t usually talk about the shortages themselves that much, quite frankly,” she said in an interview with The Riverside Record. “To me, it’s more about what kinds of things do we need to bridge those shortages.”

The report identified three areas of focus: Closing the gap between training and job requirements, building interest to fill demand in public health careers and increasing retention through modernized human resources practices. These focus areas were further broken down into action items. 

The first on the list: Establishing an academic public health department.

“I had honestly never heard of that before, until it was brought up by one of the partners,” Fox said. “It is a way of setting up memorandums of understanding between universities and public health departments and other partners to really have a seamless pipeline of internships, mentorships and job placements.”

Fox said that establishing an academic public health department would put in place a process that makes it easier for students to go from education to training to full-time work either at public health departments or with other organizations that support public health work.

“Traditionally, they do start in the college setting, but our academic health department will actually take it back to the high school population as well and really look at how do we make a continuum pathway for young people,” Fox said.

Some of that work is already being done by Reach Out with its Community Health Worker training and apprenticeship programs that include 80 hours of curriculum and 40 hours of work experience. The program is now offered through Pacific Empire College, a state certified college that’s a subsidiary of Reach Out.

Those who finish the program do so as certified CHW professionals who work side-by-side with healthcare professionals to prepare case plans and help people access vital services such as CalFresh or Medi-Cal.

“It’s a great pathway to a well paying job,” Steven Hardacre, director of the Inland Health Professions Consortium at Reach Out, said.

For Fox, one of the benefits of the CHW program is that it only requires a high school diploma and can serve as a great first step for someone who wants to work in healthcare because of the skills they learn through the program.

“They can stay a CHW if they want to, and it’s very rewarding work,” she said. “But, if they did want to, [they can] use it as a first step.”

The report also calls for expanded paid internship opportunities and work-based learning programs, the development of a formal mentor program and network, aligning public health curriculum with real job demands, an annual public health career fair/boot camp, a review of the recruitment process and a streamlined hiring process.

But in order for the action plan laid out in the report to be fully realized, Fox said what the Inland Empire needs is more funding — both private and public — in order to not only keep up with the region’s growing population, but also improve health outcomes.

“This is something that we’re not only serious about, but that is crucial to the health of our region,” she said. “Moving forward, as we’re slated to have so much growth, are we just going to have growth, but it’s going to be more of the same, or are we going to grow and be healthier? We hope it’s the latter.”