Leading Meaningful Career Pathways
By Jo Ann Kirby • Photography by Conrad Borba
The shortage of medical care providers in our area constitutes its own health care emergency. HealthForce Partners Northern San Joaquin Valley is working to address this crisis by announcing the addition of two new leaders as it grows its efforts as an innovator to create solutions that will alleviate regional healthcare worker shortages with locally grown talent by collaborating with healthcare, education and community organizations.
“These new additions to our team – both of whom are established leaders with long backgrounds of service to their communities – strengthen our presence in vital areas of our overall footprint,” said Paul Lanning, HealthForce Partners Executive Director. “We’re excited to enhance our day-to-day engagement with employers, educational institutions and community-based organizations throughout the Northern San Joaquin Valley and into the foothills of the Mother Lode as we all work to alleviate staffing shortages for our employer partners, improve access to care in our communities, and provide meaningful career pathways in healthcare for local residents.”
Christina Gilbert, a lifelong Stocktonian, is excited to serve as HealthForce Partners San Joaquin County Director. “There are powerful and lasting outcomes when we collaborate to solve challenges,” she said.
Prior to her new position with HealthForce, she served as director of San Joaquin Children’s Alliance. As funding from the federal American Rescue Plan Act was allocated to San Joaquin County, Gilbert worked with the Children and Youth Task Force to bring proposals before the county board of supervisors that could best mitigate the impacts of the COVID pandemic. One such proposal resulted in a $5.2 million grant that resulted in a partnership between San Joaquin County Behavioral Health Service and HealthForce Partners to fund a workforce development program that will train, educate and develop workers for a myriad of jobs in the behavioral health sector.
“The work to build the behavioral health workforce is desperately needed. As a mother of four kids, I’m keenly aware of the mental health impacts this generation is facing and the reality that we as a community are not fully meeting this need,” the Stanislaus State graduate said. “Joining HealthForce Partners is my opportunity to harness that collective work and help us expand it to meet the needs across our community.”
Tiffani Burns is looking forward to making an impact as Director for Stanislaus County and Mother Lode Region. “If I can get even one local student to become a nurse, join the workforce and help alleviate the strain, then I’m able to do more for them in that capacity than I ever could in my previous one,” she said.
Burns’ previous stints include a development role at Stanislaus State, where she drummed up $1.5 million in support for the College of Sciences and specifically the nursing program. Most recently she served as manager at Doctors Medical Center in Modesto. “I’ve spent the last eight years working there with some of the greatest people I’ve ever met, but I also saw firsthand the critical need for nursing, behavioral health and really all other healthcare workers,” Burns, who graduated from University of Texas, Austin, said. “When I was introduced to Paul Lanning and heard about the work they were doing, I really had a ‘pinch me’ moment in that I could take my past experience and put it to use to help those I care for so deeply in the industry.”
Burns said her number one goal is to keep moving the needle in addressing healthcare. This means “growing our own workforce with students and current employees who want to have both the educational and career opportunities in their hometown, so that they can stay and make a life and raise a family,” she said.
Among the fastest-growing, poorest and least healthy regions of California, the San Joaquin Valley also has the lowest number of healthcare professionals across a range of specialties per 100,000 people of any region in California, reports the California Health Care Foundation. As 30 percent of this already stretched workforce nears retirement age, this makes the work of HealthForce to address shortages in nursing, behavioral health and allied health fields even more vital.
As HealthForce Partners marks its fifth year, Lanning said the addition of Gilbert and Burns will expand HealthForce Partners’ efforts at a critical time and can only result in healthier communities overall.
