Profiles

For Les Howard, having a sense of mission in one's life is inextricably tied to community and responsibility. This is what he learned growing up disadvantaged himself. It is how he lives his life, and it is the single-most important message that he brings to the students under his careful watch. As program director of the San Joaquin Valley College (SJVC) Primary Care Physician Assistant (PA) Program he sees himself perfectly positioned to pass on the values and resourcefulness that have inspired his own remarkable life. For Howard, the National Health Service Corps (NHSC) is one of his most important allies in the task of sending the best and brightest of his graduates to care for California's underserved communities.

After serving his country in the years following the Vietnam War, he attended and graduated from the University of Southern California's (USC) Primary Care Physician Assistant Program in 1986. As a minority and economically disadvantaged student, Howard's education was supported through the Health Careers Opportunity Program (HCOP), a HRSA-funded program for promising health career candidates with limited financial means. After 5 years of clinical practice among Cambodian patients in Long Beach, California, migrant farm workers in Val Verde, and diverse underserved populations in East Los Angeles, he was asked by USC to return and become director of "Project Prepare"-the same HCOP that had helped him through his education.

It was during this time that Howard was introduced to the NHSC. "I was asked to participate as a conference speaker on a panel of minority PA educators and professional leaders sponsored by the NHSC and the Minority Affairs Committee of the Student Academy of Physician Assistants," said Howard. There he met NHSC staff and regional representatives whose passion for increasing the number of PA Scholars mirrored his own mission of recruiting minority and disadvantaged students into USC's PA Program. Since then, he has participated in allied recruitment programs, an NP/PA summit meeting to discuss recruitment and deployment of mid-level clinicians, and worked on NHSC- sponsored events at national PA conferences.

When Howard assumed his current position at SJVC, he approached the NHSC once again. "Becoming an Ambassador was just a natural progression of my ongoing relationship with the NHSC," said Howard.

Because the PA program has only recently commenced, there are no NHSC Scholars in its charter class. However, in the short time that he has been Ambassador, along with Co-Ambassador, Jacquelynn Henderson, they have already devised a strategy for integrating PA recruitment and retention goals with those of the NHSC. And, they are well on their way to implementing their strategy, which includes:

• Selecting students from underserved area where there is a need for primary care health professionals Make sure the student understands the mission of the NHSC and really wants to go into Primary Care.
• Arranging clinical training for students in facilities that serve as a "safety net," or are familiar with or have utilized NHSC providers.
• Working with the state Primary Care Organization and/or Association and Area Health Education Centers on clinical placement in medically underserved areas.
• Looking on the Web, find the nearest NHSC service obligation site(s), and if not already affiliated with the program find out if there is something that the site and program can do together that will support the NHSC mission.
• Getting NHSC Scholars to talk with students about their experience with the NHSC and working in an underserved area

Additionally, these energetic Ambassadors have briefed SJVC's institutional officers about the many NHSC opportunities and discussed the NHSC at open houses and student orientations.

Their efforts have already caught the interest of at least five students who plan to submit applications to either the NHSC Scholarship or Loan Repayment Program in the next cycle.

To Les Howard, recruitment must also mean retention if his activities are to have a long-lasting effect. To better address both aspects of his concept of recruitment, he is looking at ways to increase the range of his activities as an NHSC Ambassador. With the example of opportunities provided by the NHSC, Howard hopes to interest other State-based foundations and organizations, both private and public, to initiate even more scholarship and loan repayment programs with the rural underserved as a primary focus.

"The literature shows that students who come from underserved areas and populations return to their communities to practice and stay," said Howard. "Scholarships for these students ensure retention, so it is in everyone's best interest to help these students focus on their education instead of where they will find the gas money to get to class."