Northwest AHEC
Hosted by , this center heavily serves the health education and workforce development needs of the communities in Alaska鈥檚 northwest region.
Alaska's AHEC Program
WHAT IS ALASKA'S AHEC?
Area Health Education Centers (AHECs) are a network of programs and centers in the United States designed to improve access to health care and address health care workforce shortages, particularly in underserved and rural areas. The AHEC program was officially established by the U.S. Congress in 1971 and is administered by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). Alaska鈥檚 AHEC began at the University of Alaska Anchorage (蘑菇视频) in 2005 and was the first in the country to be awarded through a School of Nursing, rather than a School of Medicine.
The Alaska AHEC program office is located within the 蘑菇视频 Alaska Center for Rural Health & Health Workforce. The program office contracts with six regional Centers hosted by community partners across the state. These Centers are dedicated to healthcare workforce engagement, training, recruiting, and retaining activities through academic and community-based partnerships. Each center implements educational activities involving exposure for students to healthcare delivery in rural and underserved settings.
View the 2024 ACRH-HW Annual Report
Read the full report to comprehensively see how we鈥檙e actively building the future of healthcare in Alaska鈥攁nd learn exactly how you can be a part of it!
View Annual ReportALASKA AHEC'S STRATEGIES
ENGAGE:
Engaging youth and adults by providing highly educational hands-on activities, camps, and events exploring and directly preparing for health care careers and opportunities in Alaska.
TRAIN:
Training health profession students for practice in rural and underserved communities by formally targeting all disciplines from certificate to doctoral programs and working with health facilities and providers across the state to successfully provide community-based experiential learning opportunities.
RETAIN:
Retaining a high-quality health care workforce in Alaska by consistently providing access to continuing education and professional resiliency training. The ultimate goal is to stabilize the health workforce to better meet the health care needs of Alaska.
REGIONAL AHEC CENTERS
Interior AHEC
Hosted by , this center directly supports healthcare workforce training and education for the interior region of Alaska.
Yukon-Kuskokwim AHEC
Hosted by , this center focuses strictly on addressing the healthcare needs of rural communities in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.
Southcentral AHEC
Hosted by , this center provides workforce development and health education services exclusively to the communities in the Southcentral region.
Southeast AHEC
Hosted by , this center provides support for healthcare professionals and students in Southeast Alaska, focusing entirely on improving access.
Southwest AHEC
Hosted by , this center formally offers healthcare workforce training and educational opportunities for communities in Alaska's Southwest region.
Regional AHEC contact information for each center and its director can be found here.
ALASKA AHEC CENTERS MAP
ALASKA AHEC PROGRAM SERVICES
Alaska AHEC meticulously offers a variety of specialized programmatic pipelines to support students, professionals, and communities in fundamentally strengthening Alaska鈥檚 healthcare workforce.
- Youth Exploration & Career Camps 鈥� Hands-on learning experiences designed to actively expose youth to healthcare careers.
- Rural Health Career & Technical Pathways (CTEPS) 鈥� Advanced career exploration pathway integration strategies strictly for rural school districts.
- PATH Academy 鈥� Highly immersive pre-apprenticeship program deployed for participants to prepare for clinical careers via formal mentorship and certification training.
- Rural Immersion Institute of the North (RIIN) 鈥� Cohort-based program engineered for college students to directly experience the unique rural healthcare network across Alaska.
- AHEC Scholars Program 鈥� Standardized long-term learning interventions for healthcare students interested exclusively in practicing within rural and underserved regions.
- Continuing Education & Training 鈥� Statewide professional development and deployment opportunities, inherently including required certifications and advanced clinical workshops.
- 鈥� A comprehensively curated digital menu of continuing education opportunities directly relevant to all Alaskan clinical providers.
BECOME AN AHEC CHAMPION
Please complete our official engagement form if you are deeply interested in getting more thoroughly involved with AHEC programs across the vast state of Alaska. The AHEC Program robustly offers funding for tactical summer assignments, travel support, and instructional buy-out time, fundamentally dependent on the type of intervention and total hours executed. We are actively seeking dedicated champions to structurally support various core initiatives, including Youth Health Career Exploration鈥攚here champions can dynamically serve as guest speakers or lead instructors for robust week-long intensives directly in rural Alaska.
Other explicit opportunities include coordinating placement logistics for the AHEC Scholars Program, facilitating formal Continuing Education through evidence-based curriculum development and clinical instruction, and providing critical services for Train the Trainer opportunities (e.g., MHFA, BLS, Mandt certifications). Highly specialized champions can also directly support Recharge Center services, write collaborative federal-level grant proposals, and lead instructional design engineering.
RESOURCES & PARTNERSHIPS
Alaska AHEC fundamentally thrives exclusively through intensely strong, high-yield partnerships meticulously engineered with statewide healthcare institutions, universities, government agencies, and embedded community organizations.
Without these strategic organizational alliances, Alaska's AHEC Program operations would cease to exist. These deliberate, robust collaborations massively expand healthcare education deployment, clinical training capacity, and critical workforce retention systems strictly across Alaska, especially specifically targeting our most isolated and vulnerable rural areas. We profoundly thank all of our formal institutional partners for their undying dedication to actively driving Alaska AHEC鈥檚 complex statewide mission forward!
Key Resources & Statutory Partners:
- 鈥� Heavily supports fundamental healthcare access strictly in underserved and profoundly vulnerable communities.
- 鈥� The primary nationwide macro-network governing and supporting all domestic organizational AHEC programs.
- 鈥� An internationally recognized, high-powered student-led organization engineered entirely for aspiring next-generation clinical healthcare workers.
- 鈥� Formally oversees macroeconomic education initiatives and frameworks strictly related to long-term healthcare career pipelines.
- 鈥� Controls and maintains statutory workforce training legislation and statewide clinical employment resources.
- 鈥� Structurally manages immense public health initiatives and localized community well-being defense programs statewide.
For more expansive operational information regarding AHEC partnerships and exactly how they mechanically sustain and support Alaska鈥檚 critical healthcare workforce, please contact an AHEC director today!