The John A. Hartford Foundation blog

On July 15, at Macomb Community College (Warren, Michigan), President Barack Obama offered a new plan to commit $12 billion in federal funds to community college education across the nation. The plan, called The American Graduation Initiative, would provide funding to help these schools establish partnerships with businesses, coordinate their programs with high schools and four-year colleges, and perhaps most importantly, encourage the many students who drop out of community colleges to complete their degrees.

From the Hartford Foundation’s perspective, this initiative addresses a critical issue in helping meet the nation’s expanding health care needs over the coming decades—filling more than a half-million new positions in nursing over the next few years. The majority of these nurses will prepare for their professions in pre-licensure associate degree programs. The Foundation has taken an active role in this area through the Fostering Geriatrics in Associate Degree Nursing Education project, a national program based at Community College of Philadelphia under the leadership of Elaine Tagliareni, EdD, RN.

David Brooks, in a recent OpEd piece for The New York Times, welcomed the president’s initiative and underscored the importance of community college education in the nation’s economic recovery. We felt that the Foundation’s perspective with regard to health care would add a critical perspective to Mr. Brooks’s column, and I submitted a response to the Times, which was published in the July 20 edition of the paper.

I’d like to encourage everyone to read it, and of course, comments are welcome.  I hope it will bring greater awareness of the important role community colleges can take in reforming health care and helping to prepare our health care system for an aging patient population.