During the countless times he’s driven on Highway 99 between Lodi and Merced in search of resources for healthcare professionals, Paul Lanning considered what other professional opportunities he could take on to benefit his county.
Lanning’s search proved fruitful as he was recently appointed to the San Joaquin County Workforce Development Board, bringing industry knowledge of the tri-county (San Joaquin, Stanislaus and Merced) employment and educational landscape.
The position had been vacant for over a year, he told CVJC.
“(The board) was excited to hear that about my interest,” Lanning said, “because there has not been a focused healthcare representation on the board recently. It’s certainly an area of great interest and growth opportunity for them.”
Over 700,000 people live in San Joaquin County but less than 85,000 people are employed in traditional healthcare careers.
The Workforce Development Board of San Joaquin County is responsible for increasing local employment opportunities by offering training programs for people looking for new work and resources to employers.
Before his latest appointment to the board, Lanning has been heavily involved in achieving similar goals in his current role as the executive director of Healthforce Partners of the Northern San Joaquin Valley since he began in June 2022.
WorkNet, the community facing entity of the San Joaquin County Workforce Development Board, already offers job training opportunities through the Healthforce Partners network.
Lanning says much of his work with Healthforce Partners, a relatively new non-profit organization dedicated to attracting, training and retaining local healthcare professionals in the region, will overlap with the goals of San Joaquin County’s Workforce Development Board.
Finding new funds to meet people where they’re at
In line with the board’s current goals, Lanning said one aspect he would like to focus on as he begins his new position is to look for new financial supporters to back their work.
Over the course of his career, Lanning has become an expert on doing exactly that.
As a former professor, he used to develop and instruct graduate-level courses on alternative revenue generation, marketing, philanthropic fundraising and more at the University of the Pacific.
Ideally he said he would like to work on bringing in more money from local partners so the county department does not have to constantly rely on state and national funds, like those received through the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act.
As the executive director of Healthforce Partners, Lanning has worked with workforce development boards in San Joaquin, Stanislaus and Merced counties, and noted their needs for financial flexibility.
“The current funding model is very prescribed in terms of who can be supported with what type of aid, what level, etc. But there are people far beyond that limitation that also would benefit from assistance, outreach and training programs. If we can find other forms of support that could invest in those areas, we’re going to benefit everybody in the community as a result,” he said.
Opportunities to watch for
Healthforce Partners currently offers three pathway programs. Some are for high school and college students, while others are aimed at healthcare professionals seeking to grow out of their entry-level positions.
“One of the big challenges in our healthcare settings, hospitals and clinics alike, is not just filling open positions, but retaining those ones that are in those positions,” Lanning said.
San Joaquin Delta College has worked with Healthforce on the HOPE (Helping Our People Elevate) Program, which offers an accelerated pathway for entry-level employees of healthcare facilities and high school students to become registered nurses. The program has a built-in coordinator who assists the students as they juggle full time work and course loads.
The organization has also secured funding to support multiple behavioral health pathway programs for loan repayments, retention bonuses and paid internships.
“We’re actually providing clinical supervision on behalf of the employer side of (the paid internships), so the employers don’t have to try to do that,” Lanning said.
In his dual capacity, Lanning hopes to build awareness of how the healthcare landscape is changing for people seeking early stage opportunities to enter the workforce.
“Emerging professions are not hospital-based jobs, necessarily,” he said. “They are with community-based organizations providing care in specific communities at the frontline. They’re support specialists, community health workers, home health aides, wellness coaches, positions like this.”
Healthcare employers across the northern San Joaquin Valley are asking Lanning how educational institutions can introduce more programs dedicated to these new positions in the region, and how to find them if they already exist.
He told CVJC that Healthforce Partners is working to tackle this by creating an assessment data tool for their website that can tell users where openings and education programs are.The tool will also help with information addressing the needs of employers and training programs throughout the three county region for pursuing degrees and the career paths that lead people to these different roles.
The online tool aimed to pull all this information into a clear, concise format is still in the testing phase.
“There are so many that people might not have heard of exactly what would really fit them because not everybody is cut out to be a nurse, but a lot of people are cut out to be in healthcare, supporting the work that nurses are doing,” Lanning said.
You can find more information on current healthcare career opportunities online at Healthforcepartners.net and sjcworknet.org.
Vivienne Aguilar is the health equity reporter for the Central Valley Journalism Collaborative, a nonprofit newsroom in collaboration with the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF).