By Jennifer Fernandez
At Duke Health, annual openings for nurses hover around 5,000. For nursing care assistants, the hospital system sees more than 1,200 openings.
The list goes on and on: certified medical assistants, 350 openings; respiratory care practitioners, 170; medical lab scientists, 170; clinical research coordinators, 100; surgical technicians, 100.
The health system has partnered for years with Durham Public Schools and Durham Technical Community College to help train the next generation of health care professionals and fill some of those openings. The three organizations collaborate on the City of Medicine Academy, where students get practical experience in various medical fields while in high school and can graduate with professional certifications or a two-year degree.
A new $29.5 million grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies will provide more opportunities for students in Durham Public Schools to explore health care careers. Those students will be able to get jobs that pay well right out of high school.
That help is sorely needed. North Carolina faces a potential shortage of close to 21,000 registered nurses and at least 5,000 licensed practical nurses by 2033, according to Erin Fraher, a researcher on North Carolina’s health care workforce at the Sheps Center for Health Services Research at UNC Chapel Hill. Fraher created the Nursecast, a forecasting tool used to help predict needs in health care professions.
“We also see those shortages in skilled nursing facilities, hospice, our school systems. There are a lot of organizations that are in need of nurses, including those teaching the next wave, the next generation, of nurses,” said Debra Clark Jones, associate vice president for community health at Duke Health. “It’s a community shortage. It’s not just a health system shortage, and it’s affecting folks across the nation.”
New school
For the new health care high school, the Middle College at Durham Tech will expand to an early college high school and will be housed in newly renovated space on the community college campus.
Students will take both high school and college courses, allowing them to earn a two-year associate degree by the time they graduate high school. Officials said in a news release announcing the grant that students also will graduate with one or more credentials required to fill high-demand positions, including certified nursing assistant, emergency medical technician, phlebotomist and central sterile processing technician.
The new high school, expected to open in fall 2025, will focus on training students as nurses, surgical technologists and clinical researchers and for careers in allied health, which encompasses such jobs as respiratory therapist, dietitian and medical technologist.
“We could have multiple schools doing these pathways and still not fill the talent gap,” said Julie Pack, senior executive director for career and technical education and magnet programs for Durham Public Schools. “These particular pathways, while the student can go on to get more education, they’ll walk out of the four-year experience with a degree and certification that allows them to go right into a high-demand, high-paying job that is right here in this community.”
The school will enroll 100 ninth graders the first year, then add 100 students each year over the next three years.
The grant is one of two awarded in North Carolina out of 10 nationally as part of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ “Student-centered, Market-driven Healthcare Education Initiative.”
The goal is to “graduate students directly into high-demand healthcare jobs with family-sustaining wages,” the nonprofit said in a news release.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools will work in partnership with Atrium Health on a health care high school in that community. No information has been released on the grant amount for that school.
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system would only release a prepared statement about the announcement.
“We believe in providing our students with the best opportunities and preparing them for life beyond Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools,” Susan Gann-Carroll, executive director of the district’s College & Career Pathways wrote in an email to NC Health News. “This investment from Bloomberg Philanthropies promises to open new pathways for our students to explore. In the weeks ahead, we’ll be providing more detail about the partnership with Atrium Health and how students will benefit.”
In a separate emailed statement, Atrium Health also said it would be sharing more information on the project in the coming weeks.
“We’re excited to have been selected for such a transformational investment and the impact its forward-thinking approach can have,” the health system said.
Mitigating shortages
One way Duke Health is approaching the shortages is by exploring how technology strategies, such as telehealth, can help them reach more patients with a smaller staff.
On the education side, along with the Bloomberg grant school, Duke Health is working with Durham Tech on another project launched in June 2023. The hospital system is providing financial and other resources, such as equipment and instructors, to help the community college work with an older cohort of students interested in becoming surgical technologists or nurses.
Durham Public Schools offers other options for students to study health care and is taking steps to include even more.
Beyond early/middle colleges — which include more intensive services for students learning on college campuses from ninth grade — all junior and senior students can take dual credit health care classes to earn college credit.
And a focus on health care can start before high school. The district already has summer programs to help middle school students start exploring career opportunities.
This summer, they’re partnering with Duke Health on a health care-specific camp.
In the fall, Durham Public Schools held a career fair for eighth graders called “Acceler8.” The new event offered students a chance to explore a variety of potential careers, many of them in the health care industry.
By 2026, every middle school in the district will have a component of health science for students to experience and explore as part of career and technical education. Currently, health care pathways are only available at three middle schools, Pack said.
Not having enough health care professionals can lead to delays in elective surgeries, provider burnout, and longer waits to access care, Clark Jones said.
She said it is a priority at Duke Health to have timely access to primary care.
“It can be more challenging if you don’t have the right number of people in these support roles,” she said.
Path to success
Both Duke Health and Durham Public Schools see the new health care high school as more than just a way to fill openings. There’s also an opportunity to create greater diversity within the health care industry in their community. About 80 percent of the school system’s students are Black, Latino and from other ethnic and racial groups.
“The community of health care practitioners does not always reflect the communities that they serve,” Pack said. “By opening this opportunity up to our student body, we are equalizing or equitizing the health care here in Durham for those communities, and I think that’s very powerful.”
And they see it as a path to good-paying jobs right out of high school, which also can improve the future health of students and their families.
“If folks have greater economic stability, that leads to greater health equity,” Clark Jones said.
The median starting salary for surgical technologists is $56,000, and for respiratory therapists it’s $71,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Pack said that society seems to promote a four-year university degree as the path to success for all students.
“I think it’s just one path to success and not the path to success,” she said. “We’ve got to rewrite the narrative, and this is one way to do that.”
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