In 2024, Grand Rapids African American Health Institute (GRAAHI) was awarded a three-year $108,000 grant to support its My Pace Initiative, which seeks to increase diverse representation in the healthcare field, with a specific focus on diagnostics, therapeutics, clinical care, and health informatics. Hear from director of operations & healthcare access programs TeAsia Jordan, as she shares her insights into this work.
Name and role with the organization.
TeAsia Jordan, PhD, Director of Operations & Healthcare Access Programs
Brief overview of your organization and what you do.
GRAAHI’s mission is to eradicate health disparities for African Americans by influencing health policy and practice through community engagement, advocacy, research, and education. The Center for Pathways to Healthcare Careers Department (CPHC) is GRAAHI’s educational and career-readiness arm, advancing equity by connecting underrepresented learners of all ages to access healthcare career pathways through immersive hands-on exploratory and clinical simulation experiences designed to ignite curiosity, deepen skill development, and strengthen long-term educational and career outcomes.
Please provide an overview of the My Pace Initiative
My Pace is the Center’s flagship program that guides students from 3rd grade through adulthood on a clear path toward healthcare careers. Through hands-on experiences, college tours, and exposure to professionals of color, we help underrepresented learners explore, prepare for, and succeed in every stage of their educational and professional journey.
How did the initiative come to be, and what need does it serve?
The Pathways to Healthcare Initiative was launched in 2017 with the focus of workforce disparity issues with a multi-component approach. The work began with academic support for middle school students with language arts, mathematics, and science with the goal to improve participants’ basic academic skills and enhancing their knowledge of, interest in, and preparation for clinical healthcare careers.
The healthcare system, school system, and college/university intervention strategy was based on Press Ganey’s two-factor model for improving diverse representation in healthcare: a) the development and promotion of a robust, diverse talent management model, and b) reporting results from a standardized instrument to measure progress in reducing staff turnover, particularly turnover in clinical staff members who are Black, Latinx, Asian, Biracial/Multicultural of Color or American Indian, as a result of implementing the model’s inclusive policies and practices.
What are its primary goals?
The primary goals of our My Pace Program are to provide clinical experiences, educational and college readiness experiences, mentorship, and community to our My Pace Members to support their path development to healthcare. To support the cultivation of sense of belonging, the My Pace program hosts a movie night, a community service project, a career fair in February, and an end-of-the-year program called our My Pace Showcase to celebrate their accomplishments.
What does the Pacesetter program look like for youth participants? How does the program evolve from 8th-12th grade?
Each year, the Members of the My Pace Program are exposed to different experiences to encourage looping in the program and compounding experiences from one year to the next. Our 8th grade students review all five of our healthcare routes we use in our program, explore the clinical careers in those routes, and they close the year with a final project and announcing which route they are most interested in exploring throughout high school. Our first year high school members focus their year on the career exploration in the route they declared from their 8th grade year. Our sophomore members spend the year exploring the postsecondary options they would need to enter the healthcare workforce and closing the year out with a career portfolio that culminates their first year of high school and their sophomore year together. Our Junior high school members review Chronic Health issues that disproportionately affect communities of color and urban communities to create their own S.W.O.T analysis of that health disparity and develop an intervention or an enhancement to a current intervention for the health disparity. Our senior members spend the year learning about the Social Determinants of Health and develop their own solution to a healthcare problem they’ve experienced or identified. All membership levels experience mentorship, clinical experiences, and tailored collegiate visits.
How are participants supported throughout the program?
Through this program, GRAAHI supports the members of My Pace as they matriculate through their academic programs and transition into the workforce. As I mentioned before, the goal of CPHC is to support the diversification of the workforce to mirror our Kent County community. Therefore, GRAAHI prioritizes partnerships with workforce development agencies and organizations, healthcare organizations, and community advocates who share a similar vision for our community. Through our shared knowledge, we are able to support our members through the various transitions from student to employee with the critical experiences needed to thrive in our workforce.
How has student/community voice shaped the initiative?
Biannually, we host focus groups to hear student, parent, administrator, and workforce agency perspectives on what’s working and what’s not working in the community. From these focus groups and conversations, we review that information and find opportunities to shift our work to meet the needs of the community. We also invite our members to frequently complete anonymous surveys to support us in serving our student community.
What work have you engaged in so far, and what work to you hope to complete through the remainder of the grant period?
By the end of this grant period, I am hoping that the expectation for students to aspire to work in healthcare will be a “normalized” vocational choice for disenfranchised communities. I am also hopeful that our senior My Pace Members will have successfully transitioned from high school to a postsecondary option to help them pathway to a healthcare career.
What do you hope is the lasting impact of the program for both students and the Community?
My hope is that the lasting impact can be seen with a workforce that looks like where we live, and students see their peers when they go to the doctor’s offices, either working at the front desk, delivering a nutritious meal to a loved one who’s staying at the hospital for an extended amount of time, providing information to a birthing family, or creating a new intervention to help people go back to work after a serious injury. My hope is that through us introducing the variety of entry points in clinical healthcare careers, our members can start their journey, sooner than later, to support a positive patient-provider experience.
What have you learned and what might you share with other organizations who similarly support diverse young people interested in pursuing careers in Health Care?
Collaboration has been one of the most important factors in seeing our students thrive and successfully transition into the workforce. When we can successfully hand off students to someone we know, like, and trust, our students are more likely to embrace change and build new relationships. As funding fluctuates, our service has to be steady, and maintaining that steadiness has only been possible when our partners shoulder uncertainty with us.
How does the My Pace Initiative support the Steelcase Foundation’s overarching mission of cultivating communities where children and their families can flourish?
Even though the My Pace Program has a healthcare workforce development focus, our My Pace Program cultivates spaces for learners to transition into a career that will allow them to flourish. Barriers to employment often include access to education or access to mentorship programs that support their workforce readiness. Our My Pace Program solves that problem by providing an access point to educational and clinical opportunities.
Is there anything else you’d like to lift-up about this work?
Yes! If you are a healthcare professional and would like to share your experiences with our My Pace Members, we would love to host you as a professional development speaker. Please email me at teasia.jordan@graahi.org so I can learn more about your work and see how we may be able to schedule you into our rotation.
