Statewide Program at UCSF Fresno Secures Funding to Support and Encourage Students to Pursue Careers in Health Care

By Barbara Anderson, UCSF Fresno Communications, barbara.anderson@ucsf.edu

The California Statewide Area Health Education (AHEC) was awarded a $1.98 million state grant in 2023 to develop health profession pathway programs. Located within and administered by the UCSF Fresno Department of Family and Community Medicine, the AHEC was established in 1972 to recruit, train and retain a health professions workforce dedicated to underserved communities.

UCSF Fresno’s California AHEC was one of 20 organizations statewide to receive a grant from the Department of Health Care Access and Information (HCAI). Overall, HCAI awarded $40.8 million in 2023 to be administered through the Health Professions Careers Opportunity Program, which focuses on students entering the fields of primary care, behavioral health, geriatrics, nursing and oral and allied health.

HCAI awarded the nearly $2 million grant to AHEC to support and encourage students from underrepresented regions and backgrounds to pursue health care careers.

As the home institution for the California AHEC, UCSF Fresno subcontracts with a network of 12 AHEC centers, serving 33 counties located in under resourced areas of the state. The centers provide population-based education and training for students and health professionals. Each center, in collaboration with a regional advisory board, develops programs to respond to specific health care workforce needs.

Health care workforce development is crucial in California, especially in the San Joaquin Valley, which has the secondlowest rate of primary care physicians per 100,000 population in the state.

Ivan Gomez, MD, who directs the California AHEC and serves as chief of the UCSF Fresno Department of Family and Community Medicine, said the HCAI grant will support the continuation of efforts to diversify the health care workforce. “This is an acknowledgment of AHEC’s 50-year successful track record and an opportunity to expand and extend our work.”

Also in 2023, the AHEC held a first Annual Community Project Symposium that brought AHEC Scholars together throughout California to highlight the outreach and research they had conducted within their communities in four topic areas: community education, patient education, teaching students and clinic quality improvement.

All 12 AHEC centers in California participate in the AHEC Scholars Program in Community Health, which launched in 2018 for highpotential health professions students to experience primary care with an emphasis on community health and interdisciplinary practice in medically under resourced areas. The California AHEC has had over 300 students complete the AHEC Scholars program.