NEWBURGH — U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, in Newburgh on Monday, announced her push to provide $67 million for the Area Health Education Centers (AHEC) program at the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA).
AHECs commit to diversifying the health workforce by recruiting a diverse population of youth to health care careers and facilitating the distribution of clinicians, especially in underserved and rural communities.
Each AHEC places health professions students in a variety of real-world settings, such as migrant, urban, and rural community health clinics and health departments to provide health care to surrounding populations.
With close to 50 years of operation, AHECs meet the current and emerging needs of the communities they serve through robust community-academic partnerships, with a focus on exposure, education, and training of the current and future health care workforce.
AHECs serve 85 percent of all counties nationally and support health care workforce development and education by training providers in interdisciplinary settings to respond to the needs of special and underserved populations.
In New York State, there are three regional centers and nine AHECs statewide. Local New York AHECs facilitate virtual and experiential learning activities for high school students that focus on health disparities, including checking in on homebound seniors, updating outreach materials, vaccine outreach, and sharing public health approaches to community-specific health issues.
