Area Health Education Center (AHEC), University of Hawaii JABSOM

The Hawaiʻi/Pacific Basin Area Health Education Center (AHEC) strives to provide recruitment, placement, and retention activities to address community, state, and regional health workforce needs, performing health and health workforce needs assessments and improving distance learning and telehealth utilization.  There are four primary activity areas:

• Educating K-16+ students about health careers in hopes that they will pursue careers in healthcare.
• Training health professions students in the rural and underserved communities of Hawai‘i and the Pacific Basin, often in inter-professional teams so that they will return to areas of need with the teamwork skills needed.
• Recruiting healthcare professionals to rural and underserved areas and providing continuing education to make sure that everyone has access to the care they need, where they need it, when they need it.
• Conducting health profession workforce assessments to determine shortages and plan interventions to improve workforce supply.

Our GOAL is to facilitate access to an abundant supply of knowledgeable and culturally competent providers through training and recruitment partnerships that will help develop a health professional workforce that represents and takes excellent care of the population of the US Pacific. We provide accredited, high-quality continuing education offerings and professional support to meet the needs of healthcare professionals, especially those practicing in underserved areas. These programs are designed to enhance clinical skills and help maintain professional certifications.

The Hawai‘i/Pacific Basin AHEC makes three promises:

• We will help any student in Hawai‘i/Pacific region who is interested in a healthcare career get there
• We will find a speaker for any school on health or health careers
• We will entertain any ideas you have to improve the healthcare system so that everyone here gets the care they need, where they need it, when they need it