Wilbur Wright College in Chicago, Illinois, has a healthcare partnership between a community college and three community based organizations in the Chicago area, aimed to increase the number of bilingual/bicultural (English/Spanish) healthcare professionals in the areas of Certified Nurse Assistant (CNA) to Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN) to Registered Nurse (RN). Carreras en Salud uses an innovative career pathway model that helps advance students from lower levels of basic skills to college level certificate and degree programs as well as state licensure. Carreras en Salud utilizes a contextualized curriculum model to help improve the students’ basic skills to college levels without the need for remediation classes.

The program has enrolled over 500 students in its first two years and has graduated over 50 CNAs and 86 LPNs. The other students are at different levels within the pathway, including some who have transferred to an RN program.

Carreras En Salud is funded with private foundation dollars at the lower levels of the career pathway, and as the students advance to college levels the Pell grant and Workforce Investment Act (WIA) become the primary sources for those who qualify. Carreras En Salud raises over $350,000 a year from private foundations to support students by assisting with tuition, fees, learning materials, as well as other non-academic expenses such as childcare, transportation, etc.
Carreras En Salud aims to increase the number of bilingual (English/Spanish) Healthcare professionals and to replicate the Carreras En Salud model in areas of high diversity in Chicago and its surrounding metropolitan area. Carreras En Salud targets adult bilingual (English/Spanish) residents in Chicago and surrounding areas with low to pre-college levels of basic skills who are interested in the area of healthcare as a profession. Bilingual, bicultural nurses are critically needed in the City of Chicago communities to effectively satisfy the increasing demand for quality healthcare by the fastest growing minority in Chicago and in the nation. These nurses are also needed to address the growing health disparities experienced by the Latino and other minority populations. The Carreras En Salud Model has been helping to close the gap of bilingual/bicultural healthcare professionals in a city with over 25% percent of Spanish speaking residents.

Carreras En Salud will be a national model for two essential elements in the career and technical education fields: A model for the development of effective partnerships between community colleges and community based organizations, and a model to develop programs with all the support elements needed to effectively prepare the non-traditional low skill adult for skilled jobs that pay livable wages and help them advance in their career goals.