The healthcare industry is one of the fastest growing industries and largest employers in the country. In Chicago alone, healthcare encompasses an estimated 12.2 percent – or $69.7 billion – of the region’s total economic production.  But that growth is causing a shortage of qualified healthcare professionals – not just doctors and nurses, but also community health workers, nursing assistants, paramedics, home health aides, and lab technicians, just to name a few.

Meanwhile, many Americans in our communities are struggling. They want to work to lift their families out of poverty, but they face barriers to employment and limited opportunities. They don’t have the right skills or education, or they can’t afford child care, or they don’t have a car or money for the bus. Some of them have made mistakes in the past and need a second chance.

Nearly a decade ago, Congress launched a demonstration program to help address these barriers to employment while simultaneously reducing the national shortage of health professionals. The Health Profession Opportunity Grant program -  or HPOG program -  tested an approach that combined high-caliber job training with critical supports targeted to low-income parents seeking good-paying health careers. The premise was simple.  If we level the playing field, vulnerable workers will succeed. 

The results of the demonstration are impressive. Participants - predominately women, single parents, workers from racial and ethnic minority communities, and individuals who did not finish high school - overwhelmingly completed their training. Key support services – like child care, education, training, career coaching, and transportation – directly helped these workers earn the licenses and credentials they needed. They got jobs in healthcare. They became valued employees. They stayed in their jobs, got promoted, and got raises. And this is just the beginning for those workers because the HPOG “career pathway” approach means their wages will continue to rise as they acquire additional credentials and advance in their professions.

H.R. 3398, the Pathways to Health Careers Act, would build on the decade of success of the original HPOG program to expand the evidence-based, economic-mobility-promoting HPOG approach to all of our states, to tribal communities, and to U.S. Territories.  Also, it would create two new demonstration projects to test the HPOG approach to address serious problems that our Committee has prioritized – barriers to workforce participation for individuals with arrest or conviction records and maternal mortality and morbidity.

This bill is close to my heart. Before I came to Congress, I worked at the intersection of the health care industry and family well-being. I know how the HPOG model can grow the economic well-being of families and communities.  I want to express my deepest thanks to over a dozen of my colleagues on the Committee whose contributions made this bill stronger and more effective.

I ask for unanimous consent to insert into the record letters of support from the 20 organizations that have endorsed the Pathways to Health Careers Act. I hope all my colleagues will join me in supporting this important legislation.  Let’s seize this opportunity to invest in vulnerable workers with evidence-based training and supports to grow our workforce, strengthen our economy, and improve the health of our communities.

Congressman Davis serves as the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Worker and Family Support on the Committee of Ways and Means, with broad jurisdiction over a range of critical supports for workers, children, and families.