By Van Ton-Quinlivan
Think about the number of disconnected systems a learner must navigate to move from education into employment, especially in healthcare. What should be a pathway often feels more like a maze. A single workforce program can involve multiple handoffs: recruitment and screening, coursework through a community college or alternative provider, clinical placement with an employer, state exam preparation through yet another entity, and finally job placement and coaching. Each step may work well on its own, but together they rarely function as a coherent system.
At Futuro Health, we set out to simplify this learner journey, especially for adults from underserved communities. What began as a collaboration among healthcare education institutions has evolved into a growing ecosystem, one that now spans nine states and has expanded to include 43 vetted higher education partners sharing standardized practices.
That growth has required us to rethink what collaboration actually looks like in practice. As we entered rural geographies, such as parts of Connecticut, we partnered with smaller colleges that offered strong programs but have limited capacity to track workforce outcomes. In many cases, a single staff member was responsible for everything from accounting to following up on job placement.
Rather than turning these institutions away, we chose to invest in their growth. We are building additional shared tools and standards, helping our education partners strengthen their recordkeeping, improve accountability, and better demonstrate outcomes as well as improve interventions — when we together monitor the progress of Futuro Health Scholars on a weekly basis.
We have learned from our partners and iterated on what effective collaboration can be. The field-level infrastructure we are building continues to reduce friction for both learners and employers. Success is no longer dependent on a heroic coach or a single high-performing institution; it is embedded in a system designed for adults to earn a healthcare credential that jump starts their first or next career.
At a time when higher education is being challenged by a loss of public trust in institutions, survival may depend on heightened collaboration. The institutions that learn to work together—sharing data, aligning pathways, and co-investing in outcomes—will be the ones that endure.
This challenge is not unique to healthcare. Over the past two decades, the connection between education and employment has weakened across the economy. College graduates are taking longer to secure their first job, and the advantage of a degree, while still real, is no longer as immediate or assured. The issue is not simply access to education; it is the system’s ability to convert learning into work.
For healthcare, and increasingly across sectors, the imperative is clear: strengthen education providers so they can reliably deliver talent outcomes. That means building the shared infrastructure, data transparency, and collaborative capacity that turn programs into pathways and credentials into careers.
Without that shift, we will continue to create more doors but leave too many learners standing in the gaps.
Futuro Health CEO Van Ton-Quinlivan is a nationally recognized expert in workforce development. Her distinguished career spans the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. She is a White House Champion of Change and California Steward Leader and formerly served as Executive Vice Chancellor of the California Community Colleges.
