SLO County gets nearly $1 million to recruit and retain health care workers
A San Luis Obispo County program designed to attract and retain healthcare workers will get nearly a $1 million boost from a national nonprofit.
On Tuesday, the county Board of Supervisors voted to accept a $900,000 grant from Health Career Connection to support the SLO Healthcare Workforce Partnership, a program founded in 2023 to address the county’s critical lack of healthcare services.
With the funding, the partnership is projected to train more than 100 people through internships and a new nursing program at a Santa Maria college.
Michelle Shoresman, a division manager at the county Health Agency who oversees the partnership, said the programs backed by the grant are an important first step toward San Luis Obispo County being able to increase its healthcare workforce through its own residents.
According to a provider study conducted by the county last year, across 15 positions of need in the physical health sector, health providers in the county must make an estimated total of 8,335 hires to keep pace with the healthcare sector’s turnover and expected growth by 2034, compared to a total of 7,126 positions staffed in 2024.
Shoresman said meeting the county’s healthcare worker replacement needs will require the creation of more ways for young professionals to get their foot in the door and fill new roles in the healthcare sector, along with replacing existing providers who are set to leave for retirement or transfer to new occupations.
“We identified in the oral health, physical health and behavioral health fields probably 15 to 20 critical professions that are going to have in the 75% to upwards of almost 200% replacement need in the next five to 10 years,” Shoresman said. “That’s how we sort of first began identifying professions that were critical and at risk, and then we developed, with the employers, a surveying asking them, ‘What are the professions that you need?’”
Grant to support healthcare workforce through 2028
Shoresman said the grant will address critical shortages of healthcare workers, based in part on a study conducted by the county in 2024.
Some of the biggest needs stem from a lack of nurses, the study found. Providers will need to make hires to replace more than 50% of all registered nurses, nursing assistants, licensed vocational nurses and nurse practitioners by 2034.
For example, providers in the county will need to fill some 953 registered nursing positions by 2034 to maintain its current workforce and add 10 more nursing jobs — a little over half of the 1,847 registered nurses working in the county in 2024.
The county’s Public Health Department was first invited to apply for a grant from Health Career Connections in May 2025, and received approval in September, according to the staff report.
Once the funds are in hand, the $900,000 grant will be evenly spread out across the next three years, supporting half a dozen core goals intended to alleviate some of the county’s healthcare workforce needs.
Funding must be used to develop career exploration programs for high school students, and must manage a paid internship program for 75 college students provided by Health Career Connections that places students at a variety of healthcare-related county entities.
It must also be used to accelerate the accreditation process for A.T. Still University — a Health Career Connection affiliate — in Santa Maria to develop a nursing program that can start training a cohort of 40 students starting in 2028, according to the staff report.
Last, the grant funds must provide for four 50-week paid clinical internships at Transitions-Mental Health Association, through which Cal Poly marriage and family therapist student clinicians can gain hands-on experience.
As the funding’s duration continues, it can also be used to assess the feasibility of developing a paid, registered apprenticeship program for paramedics, psychiatric technicians and medical assistants, according to the staff report.
Under the terms of the grant, the county must contract consultants to provide help with management, planning and evaluations of the program’s effectiveness.
Shoresman said the programs backed by the grant will take some time to yield the skilled professionals that the county badly needs, but those efforts have to start somewhere.
“The county is sort of the backbone organization, at least for this grant, but really the partnership is its own consortium, based on the providers and the training entities that work in this space,” Shoresman said. “We’ve been working listening to them the whole time, (asking) what do you need, and how, as a community and as a county, can we create the workforce pool that you need and make sure that we create the pathways to the positions that you are actually going to be hiring for in the next five to 10 years?”
