The Catskill Hudson Area Health Education Center (Catskill Hudson AHEC) addresses regional healthcare workforce shortages through education and community relationships that assist students, career seekers, and health professionals. Part of the New York State Area Health Education Center system, its educational programs focus on recruiting, training, and retaining a healthcare workforce in medically underserved areas. It serves an 11-county Hudson Valley region, including all six of the Mid-Hudson Valley counties in the Dyson Foundation’s focus area.
Nearly ten years ago, Catskill Hudson AHEC created the Scrubs Club program for middle and high school students in response to difficulty recruiting local healthcare providers in rural parts of its service area. Health facilities in rural and/or low-income areas throughout the region typically struggle to hire healthcare professionals, especially those who are bilingual and/or reflect the diversity of the community. Recruiting and training from within a community has proven to be an effective way to retain health workers and to achieve better patient health outcomes. Scrubs Club aims to address these issues and has been implemented in numerous schools and after-school settings not just locally, but in 19 different states. It has won awards both locally and nationally, and participant evaluations show increased student interest in health careers and post-secondary education.
The Scrubs Club two-year curriculum includes more than two dozen health career and life skills lesson plans. It is designed to educate students about various health careers through lessons that give them the opportunity to experience activities of real-life health professions. The pandemic disrupted the normal Scrubs Club delivery model, and Catskill Hudson AHEC used that as an opportunity to update the program and transition it to an engaging online platform with interactive videos and digital activities. The new curriculum includes information about growing career fields like geriatrics and substance use disorder, and the new platform allows for real-time updates and connections to higher education and employment resources. All lessons continue to be facilitated in-person by a program leader, but the inherent flexibility of the online platform will allow it to be useful in a wider range of settings than ever before.
In 2021, Catskill Hudson AHEC received program support from the Dyson Foundation towards this redesign of the Scrubs Club program.