INA, Ill. (Feb. 24, 2015) - The Illinois Area Health Education Centers (AHEC) Network will continue to develop throughout the state thanks to funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration.
The Illinois AHEC Network currently has four centers statewide, located at Rend Lake College in Ina, KSB Hospital in Polo, Fairfield Memorial Hospital in Fairfield, and the Health and Medicine Policy Research Group in Chicago. The four locations are part of a statewide initiative to provide specialized rural and urban medical education, pre-professional health careers development and exposure, and activities and opportunities for students to participate in community health events.
Since its inception on RLC’s campus in the fall of 2013, the South Central Illinois (SCI) AHEC and Director Kelli Stover have continuously provided support to students of all ages in local communities. One of the biggest projects is the annual Discovery Camp.
“Every year we host the Discovery Camp, a free, two-day experience for students in seventh through twelfth grades who want to learn more about health careers,†said Stover. “It’s a great opportunity for students to explore several careers and decide if it’s something they will look into in their future.â€
In addition to Discovery Camp, the SCI-AHEC also coordinates job shadowing, Health Career presentations, Rural Health experiences, Community Health Initiative grants, educational funding for local students, In-A-Box toolkits for local grade and high school teachers, and continuing education programs for health care professionals.
The expansion funding calls for four additional centers to be created - three servicing rural areas across central Illinois and the fourth servicing south Chicago and southern Cook County. They will be located in Galesburg in partnership with St. Mary’s Hospital, Bloomington-Normal in partnership with Illinois State University, Gibson City in partnership with Gibson Area Hospital and Health Services, and in Chicago in partnership with Project Brotherhood at the Woodlawn Health Center.
According to information from the National Center for Rural Health Professions at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Rockford, the four current AHEC centers - including the one at RLC - served nearly 25,000 program participants from 2011 to 2014. In 2014 alone, there were 8,200 students and health professionals participating in the AHEC Network sponsored programs.
The Illinois AHEC Network provides educational programs to address the development and retention of the state’s health workforce in both rural and urban areas. The goal is to improve access to and quality of care for the underserved.
For more information about the Illinois AHEC Network, contact Stover at (618) 437-5321, Ext. 1280 or stoverk@rlc.edu.