Informed by employer conversations and by a McKinsey study that estimates California will need more than 80,000 medical assistants by 2024, Futuro Health is actively placing 1000+ candidates from across California into medical assistant programs. To help reach this goal, we are waiving tuition for medical assistant students in 2020, thanks to the financial commitment of Kaiser Permanente, SEIU-UHW, and The Education Fund.

“The medical assistant role is a good entry point into healthcare, among the few leading to an industry-valued credential in under one year,” said Debbie Yaddow, Futuro Health’s Director of Pathway Development. SEIU-UHW’s 97,000 healthcare workers lead in scouting and referring candidates who may be a fit for the career.

Futuro Health has worked with its higher education partners to design three options that meet candidates where they are at and provides them with an on-ramp to education. (See graphic above)

Option 1 is for adults who want to strengthen their English-language skills so they can pursue or advance in an allied health career.

Option 2 is for adults who still need to take prerequisite courses before they can start the Medical Assistant Program. The two courses are Medical Terminology and Anatomy & Physiology.

Option 3 is for adults who have the necessary language skills and have already completed the two prerequisite courses.

Futuro Health evaluated higher education partners based on strong workforce outcomes for students. Bay Area Medical Academy, Concorde College, Merced College, MTI College, Northwest College, Pima Medical Institute, Santa Barbara Community College and Western Governors University are among Futuro Health’s partners for this initiative along with InsideTrack and Voxy.

Futuro Health is built on partnerships. Each partner organization brings its expertise to the table, allowing us all to work together to be sure frontline healthcare workers get the skills they need to provide quality healthcare in their communities. Thanks to those partnerships, LVNs/LPNs, Medical Assistants, and other frontline roles across 34 states benefited from more than $1 million worth of training to upgrade their skills in preparation for surges in COVID-19 cases.

That training came through two courses: Pandemic Readiness for LVNs/LPNs and COVID-19 Readiness for Healthcare Workers, which we made available at no cost. We were able to do that by leveraging our in-kind contributions with that of our partners Kaiser Permanente, SEIU-UHW, Pima Medical Institute and The Education Fund.

As a public service, we are keeping these Pandemic Readiness courses available at no cost. Please help us spread the word by forwarding this information to a healthcare worker who could benefit from the training.

Here’s what people are saying about the training:

With 34 million people unemployed nationally, Futuro Health’s CEO Van Ton-Quinlivan and Katie Brown, senior federal policy analyst for the National Skills Coalition, co-authored an op-ed to advocate for better financial aid for adult workers.

“A critical step is for policymakers to immediately extend federal financial aid to high-quality, short-term training programs in high-demand industries, like healthcare. This would help new and incumbent workers quickly access the training and credentials to meet current demand and the anticipated workforce needs of the future as the population continues to age rapidly,” their opinion piece reads.

The piece is titled Solve Healthcare Worker Shortage, Policymakers Should Approve High-Quality Short-Term Training Programs for Federal Student Aid.