By The Bay Health Invests In Diverse Workforce Pipeline With New Nursing Scholarship

By the Bay Health has created a new nursing scholarship in partnership with the Dominican University of California to bolster its clinician diversity and promote culturally relevant care.

Two students each received $25,000 through the Pat Kendall Memorial Nursing Scholarship, which launched this year as part of By the Bay Health’s Pathways to Care Careers initiative. The program includes preceptorship training at the organization and potentially employment in hospice, home-based care or in adult and pediatric palliative care.

The scholarship program is aimed at developing a strong pipeline of clinicians, said Robertina Szolarova, chief administrative officer at By the Bay Health. The program also seeks to help address health care disparities among underserved patient populations.

“With this scholarship, our goal is to attract nursing colleagues from diverse backgrounds who live in and understand the communities,” Szolarova told Home Health Care News’ sister publication, Hospice News. “Cultural competence is central to how we deliver care. We’re closing the gap for patients who might otherwise go without care. That includes patients who are low-income, uninsured, socio-economically disadvantaged or living in hard-to-reach areas.”

Breaking down barriers

California-based By the Bay Health provides home-based hospice, home health, bereavement and pediatric and palliative care. The nonprofit serves nine counties across the San Francisco Bay area. By the Bay Health’s geographic service region spans a wide range of culturally diverse communities, Szolarova stated.

The scholarship program is designed to broaden career opportunities among underserved communities and increase exposure to home health, hospice and palliative care in a medical student’s training, Szolarova said. Expanding preceptor training opportunities for experienced staff has strengthened satisfaction and will hopefully trickle impacts into retention as well, she indicated.

“We’re giving students that firsthand experience and exposure to see what home health, hospice and palliative care looks like and the teamwork that happens between clinicians of all disciplines,” she told Hospice News. “Our nurses have been eager to mentor, educate and support this next generation and share why it’s a rewarding career. We really see [the program] as an initiative that increases awareness in that home-based care setting that can lead to a really valuable career that students might not be familiar with in the course of their training.”

The new scholarship honors Pat Kendall, a member of the By the Bay Health community whose career “embodied compassion and service,” prior to her death, the organization stated in an announcement shared with Hospice News. The program was established through a long-standing partnership with the university, according to Szolarova.

The scholarship is designed to assist students in financial need who have an interest in home-based care and who ideally will remain and serve local communities upon graduation, she said.

“Younger generations seem to be seeking a greater connection back into the humanness of what it means to care for others in their community,” Szolarova said. “So many of our students have mentioned that as being important.”

Fueling workforce sustainability

Dominican University of California was “particularly appreciative” of the scholarship opportunity due to recent cutbacks to federal funding for diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, By the Bay Health indicated in the statement. Founded in 1890 as an independent nonprofit, the university is a designated educational institution serving first generation Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) students.

The scholarship program could bring more education and career opportunities to underrepresented communities, said Dr. Kendra Hoepper, associate professor and chair of nursing at Dominican University of California.

Among the goals of the program is to remove some of the significant challenges fueling clinical workforce shortages, Hoepper stated in the announcement. High educational costs and a lack of exposure to community-based care settings serve as staffing issues that the program aims to address, she indicated.

“Increasingly, nurses are providing care in schools, neighborhoods, homes and community clinical settings where they can address health challenges at the population level and work closely with individuals in their everyday environments,” Hoepper said in a statement shared with Hospice News. “This scholarship not only provides substantial financial support, but also offers students clinical experiences [that] develop clinically competent, community-focused and public health-oriented nurses.”

By the Bay Health has seen an “incredible momentum” of interest in the nursing scholarship program from a staffing standpoint, Szolarova said. The program represents an investment in the organization’s Pathways to Care Careers initiative and in retention and sustainability of its workforce.

By the Bay Health recently raised $1 million in philanthropic dollars to support its workforce initiative. The funding will be used to support the scholarship and the career pathways program. The organization plans to expand the scholarship program across northern California and begin offering the scholarship to local high school students.

“Looking ahead, we see this scholarship as part of our long-term investment in the workforce,” Szolarova told Hospice News. “Ultimately, we are trying to build a pipeline in high school classrooms and in colleges for people new to the health care field. We’ve seen a lot of energy and enthusiasm in the first year and are looking to build on this.”

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