Increasing Access to Living-Wage Jobs and Health Care Benefits: Improving Community Health through Health-Career Ladders

Two significant issues facing the world's most vulnerable populations include: 1) poverty, related to poor educational attainment, limited access to career training, and low-wage jobs; and, 2) chronic disease, related to poor eating habits, physical inactivity, obesity, and limited access to health care resources. While it is obvious that these issues are interdependent, approaches to addressing these problems have historically been unifocal, focusing either on socioeconomic conditions or health conditions. Staff and students at a rural community college took an innovative approach to address and intervene on both employment and health problems as one issue. Using a participatory approach, researchers partnered with community members, workforce development leaders, college officials, and at-risk students, primarily of Native Hawaiian ancestry. The resulting Living Wage project includes three phases. Phase 1 focused on developing an employment training program and enrolling Native Hawaiians and other at-risk students into a “pathway” to ascend from Nurse-Aide (NA) to Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN) to Registered Nurse (RN). Phase II focuses on the development of tools to measure student characteristics and outcomes during and after program completion. Students who completed nurse aide training during the first eighteen months of the program were engaged through focus groups to assist in tool development and program evaluation and improvement. Tools will be used in Phase III to track participants' experiences, achievements, wage and benefits. In this session, the conceptual framework for the project and study will be shared, along with information about the career-development-and-health-promotion curriculum, lessons learned, and program outcomes to date.