News Brief: RIC’s Institute for Education in Healthcare Honored
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- News Brief: RIC’s Institute for Education in Healthcare Honored
The institute’s behavioral healthcare certificate program has made a significant impact.
At the Governor’s Workforce Board’s annual awards ceremony on June 12, RIC’s Institute for Education in Healthcare (IEH) was commended for developing training for nearly 1,000 healthcare workers.
The workforce board – the state’s primary policy-making body on workforce development matters – gave its Career Pathways Advancement Award to IEH’s behavioral health certificate program. IEH is considered a leader in workforce training for the state’s healthcare industry.
RIC School of Business Dean and IEH founder Marianne Raimondo and Jenifer Giroux, the college’s vice-president of corporate relations and professional studies, created the behavioral certificate program in 2016. RIC professors Bethany Lewis and George Ladd also assisted with developing the program’s 30-hour curriculum.
The curriculum is designed to boost the skill set of paraprofessionals and entry-level healthcare workers to recognize behavioral health challenges among their clients and seek referrals for care from nurses, social workers and others. Several employers of healthcare workers -- such as Thundermist Health Center and Crossroads – have implemented the curriculum in their training for workers.
“For the last 10 years, IEH has been working to upskill and advance the healthcare workforce in Rhode Island, especially with creating career pathways for frontline workers,” Raimondo says. “This award recognizes the behavioral training we provide for home healthcare workers who serve many of the state’s older adults. The training not only improved the competency of home healthcare certified nursing assistants but provided a pathway for increased wages. As these home care workers are upskilled, it improves the quality of care they provide to their patients.”
In 2022, IEH Director Tonya Glantz launched an initiative to present the certificate program in both English and Spanish among the state’s home care agencies. Overall, 47 cohorts of the program have been delivered: 28 in English and 19 in Spanish.