Nahec
Featured NAHEC programs
What is AHEC?
The AHEC (Area Health Education Centers) program was developed by Congress in 1971 to recruit, train and retain a health professions workforce committed to underserved populations. The HETC (Health Education Training Centers) program was created in 1989 to provide programs for specific populations with persistent, severe unmet health needs. Together the AHEC and HETC programs help bring the resources of academic medicine to bear in addressing local community health needs. By their very structure, AHECs and HETCs are able to respond in a flexible and creative manner in adapting national health initiatives to the particular needs of the nation’s most vulnerable communities.
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Arizona AHEC
Helping Arizonans get the healthcare they need where they need it.
Our mission: To improve the recruitment, diversity, distribution, and retention of culturally competent personnel providing health services in rural and medically underserved communities.
The Arizona AHEC Program serves our rural and medically underserved communities and populations through five community-based non-profit AHECs and is administered through the University of Arizona Health Sciences Center.
The Arizona AHEC Program works in partnership with Arizona State University, Northern Arizona University, Arizona’s community colleges and a wide spectrum of K-12 educators, community based agencies, health care institutions and healthcare providers.
National AHEC
Distortions in our health care system result in marked inequities in access to and quality of health care services, which are reflected in unacceptable racial and ethnic disparities in health status and the under-representation of minority and disadvantaged individuals in the health workforce. AHEC and HETC programs play a key role in correcting these inequities and strengthening the nation’s health care safety net. Through community-based interdisciplinary training programs, AHECs and HETCs identify, motivate, recruit, train, and retain a health care workforce committed to underserved populations.
About AHEC Programs
Area Health Education Centers (AHECs) are academic-community partnerships that train health care providers in sites and programs that are responsive to State and local needs. Health career enhancement and recruitment programs for K-12 students are emphasized.
AHECs improve the supply, distribution, diversity and quality of the health workforce, ultimately increasing access to health care in medically underserved areas.
AHECs link the resources of university health science centers with local planning, educational and clinical resources. This network of health-related institutions provides multidisciplinary educational services to students, faculty and local practitioners, ultimately improving health care delivery in medically underserved areas.
The AHEC program is a long-term initiative, requiring major changes both in the traditional method of training medical and other health professions students and in the relationship between university health science centers and community health service delivery systems.
States with AHEC Programs
A total of 49 AHEC Programs and 211 affiliated AHEC Centers are ongoing in 45 states and the District of Columbia. The states of Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, North Dakota, South Dakota, and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico do not have federally funded AHEC Programs or AHEC Centers.
Legislative Authority
The Health Professions Education Partnerships of 1998 reauthorized the AHEC Program (Basic AHEC and Model AHEC) for five years. The Basic AHEC Program was initiated in FY 1972; the Model State Supported AHEC Program was initiated in FY 1993.
Impact
In a typical year, AHECs
•Train 37,000 health professions students (17,000 medical students and 20,000 other health professions students) in community-based sites
•Work with approximately 1,500 federally-funded community and migrant health center sites and other underserved area sites, 800 health departments and 180 National Health Service Corps sites
•Provide health career enhance and recruitment activities of 20 hours or more to 42,000 students grades 9-12
•Provide continuing education to 315,000 local health care providers