 Health Care Council 2333 North Broadway, Suite 460 Santa Ana, CA 92706 |
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WHAT THE HECK IS AHEC? AHEC is an acronym for Area Health Education Center. There are ten AHECs in California, and the Orange County Health Care Council is the designated AHEC for this county. For the past 28 years, the AHEC programs across the nation have worked to build bridges between America's academic health centers and underserved communities. These programs were put in place so that medical schools and other participating academic institutions could help our nation's underserved and under-represented communities to recruit, retain and keep physicians and other health professionals up to date regarding the delivery of health care services. Linking academic health centers with AHECs improves the capacity and efficiency for outreach efforts by these institutions and insures community input for their programs. There are several different models for establishing an AHEC. The most common one is a contractual relationship between a program office in an academic health center, and a non-profit corporation such as the Health Care Council, representing the health care needs of the regional service area (Orange County). In our case the University of California, San Francisco, which operates its central AHEC office for the state in Fresno is the academic health center. Funding for AHECs comes from state, local and federal sources. For the Orange County AHEC, funding consists of a contract for federal "Model AHEC" funds, which the Health Care Council uses to help fund a number of subcontractors. When the Health Care Council was designated as the Orange County AHEC, the program was in the second year of a three-year contract to support the Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP) program at the University of California, Irvine College of Medicine. Approximately $30,000 per year in federal funds were being received, mostly to support the UCI program, with some funds going to the Laguna Beach Community Clinic, where students were receiving preceptor-supervised hands-on practicum. Each year since then, the Health Care Council has been able to expand the program. Through increasing AHEC contracts, and thanks to private foundation and hospital grants, the program has grown. In particular, Kaiser Permanente of Orange County and the California Wellness Foundation have been most generous in helping to fund the program, now known as the Minority Nursing Education Support Program. The program first expanded to include the nursing program at California State University, Fullerton, and subsequently the program has grown to include nine community clinics and six universities and colleges. Most recently, a small subcontract was offered and accepted by Cypress College, to participate along with UCI College of Medicine, California State University, Fullerton, California State University, Long Beach, Santa Ana College, and Golden West College nursing education programs in this coalition which had its start in the AHEC program. Community clinics in the program are:
The Health Care Council, the Orange County AHEC, believes that the nursing shortage, particularly the shortage of culturally competent nurses to serve our increasingly diverse population, is the health care system's greatest challenge. We would welcome additional funding to help us to confront this challenge as we continue to support minority nursing education.
At the same time, we are aware of many other urgent unmet needs for health care services in Orange County. We look forward to expanding the AHEC to help meet these challenges as well. COPYRIGHT © 2000, 2001 Health Care Council of Orange County
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