As the largest employers in most communities, hospitals and health systems are always looking for new talent.

With the nation’s birth rate hitting a record low last year and the country’s rapidly aging population placing unprecedented demands on the U.S. healthcare system, the onus is on us as healthcare leaders to pull out all the stops to accelerate our recruiting efforts.

An often-overlooked resource for addressing health care’s growing workforce shortage is our high schools. During those formative years, many teens are still trying to figure out what they want to do with their lives, so there’s no better time to make them aware of health care’s many career opportunities.

The promise of building a talent pipeline and shaping the healthcare leaders of tomorrow was the catalyst for the Northwell School of Health Sciences, which opens September 4 in the New York City borough of Queens, one of the most racially and ethnically diverse counties in the U.S. This innovative partnership with NYC Public Schools is one of 10 healthcare-focused high schools being supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies and other health systems serving both urban and rural areas around the country.

Northwell’s inaugural class will have 260 students, growing to a total of 900 students when fully operational.

I’m often asked why we got involved in such an endeavor. In response, I have to provide some context about Northwell’s culture and philosophy:

We believe strongly in the importance of continuous and lifelong learning, weaving in a wide array of educational opportunities across every aspect and level within the organization.
We view education as an integral component of health, recognizing that “health” encompasses much more than just the delivery of medical care.
We have a duty and obligation to pursue solutions that ensure the availability and quality of our industry’s future workforce. We just can’t sit back and wait for others to come up with solutions; we must be proactive in creating them.
We embrace an apprenticeship model that emphasizes experimental learning by providing hands-on, real-time learning.
We believe that fostering collaborative approaches and learning are a key catalyst for continuous, positive change.

As a result of this overarching philosophy, we have built an educational and organizational infrastructure that has created a vast number of innovative educational programs for employees and the people living in our communities, including high school students.

Recognizing the value of helping all employees reach their full potential, my first action when becoming Northwell’s president and CEO in 2002 was to establish the nation’s first health system-run corporate university — the Center for Learning and Innovation. Modeled after GE’s corporate university, it quickly became an integral part of our vision to build a system-wide culture of lifelong learning, enabling employees at all levels of the organization opportunities to acquire new skills and advance their careers.

Sixteen years ago, we started the Medical Scholars Pipeline Program at the Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell. Similar to the underlying goals of the Northwell School of Health Sciences, the Medical Scholars Pipeline Program introduces high-achieving high school students from New York City and Long Island to the many career paths available in the healthcare industry, while also enhancing the skills they need to succeed, including college preparation workshops, leadership activities, public speaking and mentoring opportunities with health professionals at Northwell and its medical school. Since 2010, we’ve enrolled 288 students, with 139 of them completing the three-year program. Eighteen of them are now enrolled in medical schools and 12 others earned their medical degrees and are now practicing medicine.

More recently in 2023, we established the Northwell Community Scholars Program, in recognition of the strong connection between education and health. Among other things, we’re providing financial support, mentorship and career opportunities to several hundred young people living in our vulnerable communities, covering 85% of their expenses so they can attend college.

The success of our own Center for Learning & Innovation, the Medical Scholars Pipeline Program, the Community Scholars Program and other initiatives over the years served as the backdrop for our decision to engage with the City of New York to create this new, innovative high school of health sciences.

The school is located in a new facility located in Woodside, a working-class neighborhood in western Queens known for its melting pot of cultures. The goal is to:

increase students’ awareness about the many future career options in healthcare;
give students the skills and other knowledge they’ll need for health careers and career advancement;
integrate classroom learning with on-the-job training and real-life career exposure; and
provide all students with internship and apprenticeship opportunities, as well as certifications that will help prepare them for jobs.

The curriculum will focus on pathways to prepare students for careers as nurses, medical assistants, mental health professionals and health administrators. All students will benefit from Northwell professionals during their high school years and will continue for those pursuing college and other training.

I congratulate my healthcare colleagues elsewhere in the country who are also partnering with Bloomberg to establish other health care-focused high schools, including: Mass General Brigham in Boston; Atrium Health in Charlotte, N.C.; Baylor Scott & White in Dallas; Memorial Hermann in Houston; Duke Health in Durham, N.C.; HCA Healthcare TriStar, Vanderbilt Health and Ascension in Nashville; the University of Alabama at Birmingham Health in Demopolis, Ala.; and Ballad Health in Northeast Tennessee.

These are visionary collaborations that will create a better future for thousands of students and make a lasting impact on the future of health care for countless more. I’m confident they will become a model for other such endeavors as the nation’s collective approach to high school education continues to evolve.

Michael J. Dowling is president and CEO of Northwell Health, the largest not-for-profit health system in the Northeast and New York’s largest private employer with a workforce of 104,000.

The post Michael Dowling: Creating a talent pipeline through healthcare-focused high schools appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.