HEALTH CAREERS ACADEMY
Building an industry-standard program of excellence to train future health care professionals.
For over 20 years, the Health Careers Academy (HCA) at San Marcos High School has served as the pre-eminent high school program dedicated to preparing students for careers in the healthcare field on the Central Coast. Over 650 students, from backgrounds mirroring the diverse student body of San Marcos High, have graduated from the program, including 273 who have completed an internship at Cottage Hospital and earned a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) certificate. Over 100 of these students have obtained work locally in the healthcare field as nurses, technicians, doctors, and at least one veterinarian. Currently, approximately 180 students are participating in the HCA in grades 10 through 12, with almost every student ontrack to receive a Career Technical Education (CTE) certificate in patient care. While these numbers are impressive, the San Marcos Community recognizes that there is far more potential than we have currently tapped into.
“A talented, qualified, engaged and diverse workforce is at the heart of America’s health care system. However, hospitals and health systems face mounting workforce challenges, including critical staffing shortages, which could jeopardize access to care in the communities they serve.”
— RON WERFT, President and Chief Executive Officer of Cottage Health, and Chair of the American Hospital Association Board Task Force on the Workforce
ACCORDING TO DATA, a local healthcare worker will stay working in the Cottage Health Care system for an average of 25 years, while a non-local person will remain for an average of five years. (from the Cottage Health Community Needs Assessment Report, 2019)
This project will allow us to build an even more robust program, with new pathways in areas such as mental health and healthcare administration, by creating a new campus for the HCA with an updated, customized, centralized facility. This new building will not only provide our students with more opportunities to build lives in our local area, but also help address the dearth of qualified applicants for our local health provider organizations. Perhaps most importantly, Our new mental health pathway will allow us to leverage our new Wellness Center to both train up future leaders in the field and allow us to creatively approach the ongoing mental health crisis amongst our youth. As part of the reimagining of the HCA we have already convened an advisory panel consisting of many of the top leaders in the local health care field, and have partnered with Cottage Hospital and the Mosher Foundation to create and fund a full time HCA Coordinator to develop our new pathways, create new curriculum, and build the profoundly transformative program we envision.
Alumni Statistics
422 students have graduated from the Health Careers Academy.
214 of them graduated as Certified Nursing Assistants.
23 students have been hired at Cottage Health Systems.
52 students have been hired in other health care settings both in and outside of our community.
The demographics of the HCA mirror that of San Marcos High School. The HCA is open to all students.
