SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Futuro Health, a nonprofit organization with a mission to grow the number of credentialed allied health workers to meet the high demand, today announced early completers from an ambitious new initiative to upskill thousands of working adults for in-demand healthcare roles. In collaboration with InsideTrack and a network of education providers, Futuro Health engaged a corps of success coaches to help aspiring healthcare workers balance career training with the complexities of work, family and personal commitments.

"There are more than 10 million open jobs for the 8.4 million unemployed adults in the U.S., many of whom are low-income adults who are still experiencing long-term unemployment and underemployment. Allied health training offers a pathway that can help these individuals to upskill and reskill for meaningful work in fast-growing healthcare roles," said Van Ton-Quinlivan, CEO of Futuro Health. "Our focus is to improve the quality of care and patient outcomes while opening up economic opportunities for working adults, and we bring together great partners who can support adults in their education journey."

Nationally, there are more than five million allied healthcare professionals in the U.S. representing approximately 60% of all healthcare workers. Healthcare providers are reporting sharp increases in demand for credentialed allied health professionals, with an additional 500,000 workers needed by 2024 in California alone and 2.3 million needed nationally. Meanwhile, the so-called "Great Resignation" has hit the healthcare sector particularly hard, with disproportionately high numbers of health and medical professionals leaving the industry due to burnout—further increasing demand for skilled talent.

Futuro Health's unique model is helping to tackle the crisis of the growing skills shortage in health care by accelerating pathways to allied health careers. The program is specifically designed to serve the needs of the diverse population of working adults, starting in California: the average age of Futuro Health students is 30, 76% are women, 87% are from racially or ethnically diverse backgrounds, and 36% are bilingual.

Established in January 2020 with a $130 million commitment from Kaiser Permanente and SEIU-UHW, the organization's goal is to graduate 10,000 new licensed or credentialed allied healthcare workers by 2024 in order to meet growing labor market demand. In its first year of operation, nearly 1,700 students enrolled—outpacing the organization's early goals for enrollment. Already, 413 students have successfully completed training pathways in health IT, advanced telehealth and medical assisting. Alina B. attended the Medical Assisting program at Concorde North Hollywood thanks to Futuro Health: "I left my job to pursue this opportunity and get my Medical Assistant certification. I am working now and love it....I am happy, and my family is happy."

Since its inception, Futuro Health has teamed with InsideTrack to deploy a corps of student success coaches, called Navigators, who work with over 4,000 Futuro Health students each month to navigate the non-academic barriers to success. The Navigators help each learner mitigate the financial barriers and balance family, work, and other time commitments that can upend students' plans to complete additional education and training. Learners receive ongoing support and coaching, provided at no cost to them, along with other intensive student supports, from the point of enrollment through completion.

"Working learners often lack the support, navigation and impartial information needed to balance the complex and overlapping demands of full- or part-time work, family, and career training," said Kai Drekmeier, co-founder and chief development officer at InsideTrack. "To make good on the promise of short-term and accelerated training programs, we need to provide adult learners the comprehensive support they need to thrive during their training so they emerge prepared for the next step of their career journey."

For more information or to enroll, please visit futurohealth.org.

About Futuro Health: Futuro Health improves the health and wealth of communities by growing the largest network of credentialed allied health workers in the nation starting in California. We believe investing in education and skills training and retraining results in better-paying jobs for workers, better service for patients and better workers for employers to hire. Kaiser Permanente and Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW) partnered to establish Futuro Health in January 2020 with a $130 million commitment.

About InsideTrack: InsideTrack is passionate about helping all learners achieve their education and career goals through the transformative power of coaching. Since 2001, we've served 2.6 million learners, partnering with more than 250 institutions and organizations to directly improve enrollment, persistence, completion and career readiness. Our coaching methodology is evidence-based and research-confirmed, with proven outcomes for every type of learner — from traditional to adult, part-time to full-time, online to in-person — including first generation students and those who face systemic barriers to postsecondary success. We also work with partners to build internal coaching capacity through staff training and professional services — designed to sustain advances in-house for lasting, scalable impact. InsideTrack is a part of Strada Collaborative, a mission-driven nonprofit. To learn more, visit www.insidetrack.org and follow us on Twitter @InsideTrack and LinkedIn @InsideTrack.

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SOURCE InsideTrack