“ We need more indigenous health care professionals so that there’s the assurance that they’ll stay in their communities. And they’ll have the trust of their community members when they seek care.”
-Navajo Nation Senior Officer, MD, Senior Officer
HEAL trains and transforms front line health professionals through building a community dedicated to serving the underserved as their lifelong choice.
The Center for Health Workforce Equity, or HEAL (Health, Equity, Action, and Leadership) Initiative, seeks to embody solidarity and contribute to the movement for global health equity led by communities themselves. We believe health is achievable for even the most vulnerable populations in our world when we apply principles of equity, justice, and solidarity. People coming together can transform systems. Through the process, we also continue to be transformed.
Global health equity requires investing in people, in community. HEAL trains and transforms frontline health professionals from around the world through building a community dedicated to serving the underserved as their lifelong choice. The HEAL Initiative believes deeply in the power of people to come together to tackle the isolation of providing care to those left behind. Together in community, they train and transform health professionals to serve the resource-denied.
Focus Areas
- Community health
- Health equity
- Health in resource-denied communities
- Indigenous health
- Racial Justice
- Workforce development
FEATURED FELLOWSHIPS
Global Site Fellows are health workers who are currently employed by HEAL partner sites around the world. They have spent years embedded in and working in the communities they serve and in most cases and have a deep, demonstrated commitment to their personal growth and doing this work for the long haul, and to this global community. They come from a variety of occupations in health, from physicians to nurses to counselors to program managers and beyond.
During the two-year fellowship, HEAL Site fellows attend 3 intensive trainings, participate in one-on-one mentorship, and commit to receive funding for professional development activities while continuing their work.
Global Rotating Fellows are US-based physicians or nurses from a variety of specialties who have completed or will be in the final year of a residency program by the start of their fellowship. To apply to be a rotating fellow, you have to have completed residency in the US, and have a US passport or green card.
During the two-year fellowship, Global HEAL Rotating Fellows split their time, rotating between a US underserved site and an international underserved site, working full-time and fully immersively in each location. Rotating fellows are employed as UCSF fellows during that time period, though their day to day work is for two organizations.
Building upon a decade of success serving resource-denied communities around the world, the California Health, Equity, Action, and Leadership (HEAL) Program is a sister program of the proven HEAL model – brings the proven HEAL model to resource-denied regional hubs across the state. This one-year fellowship is designed to support the transformation, leadership development, and retention of quality healthcare professionals in California’s resource-denied communities. UC Fellows are physicians passionate about serving underserved communities in California and have 30% protected paid time for projects addressing local health needs. Local fellows who are healthcare workers already working in underserved communities join UC fellows in receiving health equity training from trailblazers in the field. The fellowship equips healthcare professionals to best serve resource-denied communities across California while developing in their medical careers.
The HEAL Southwest Leadership program seeks to provide intensive leadership training to transform Indigenous fellows to become leaders and advocates in the community in which they live and work. This fellowship is for nurses dedicated to improving the health of their communities and who want to build individual and community capacity to stay in this work for the long haul. Participants complete the program alongside working full time at their site/organization.
In medicine, we know we can’t wait for patients to arrive at the hospital. If we do we miss the most vulnerable. That’s why, after years of successful collaboration with Compañeros En Salud (Partners in Health Mexico), HEAL co-designed and co-created the HEAL/ CES Mexico Leadership Program to support care closer to the communities who benefit from it the most. Born out of our shared vision that health is a human right, this 12-month program makes HEAL’s curriculum, health equity training, and global community accessible to monolingual Spanish-speaking nurses in Chiapas, Mexico. Global health equity requires investing in people, in order to break the cycle of inequality. That’s why we’re bringing our training closer to where health workers live and work to transform even more healthcare workers, in their own language.
