California investment helps prepare ‘amazing superheroes’ for careers in emergency medicine

From the community for the community.

That's the ethos of the EMS Corps, a program started in Alameda County that has trained more than 500 young people ages 18-26 to provide emergency medical services since it launched in 2012.

Piloted in an Alameda County youth detention camp, EMS Corps was designed based on feedback from participants about what they needed to succeed. In addition to EMTs and paramedics, it has produced numerous nurses and firefighters along with doctors and other health care providers. Six months after graduation, 95 percent of graduates are employed.

EMS Corps is poised to expand to 11 additional cities and counties throughout California with the help of about $27 million awarded for planning and implementation by the state Labor and Workforce Development Agency and the Employment Development Department, as well as the California Department of Health Care Access and Information. The City of Oxnard will launch its EMS Corps program in January, with the other 10 locations following in the coming months.

"This is an innovative thing for the state to be doing," said Alex Briscoe, who was the leader of the Alameda County Health Care Services Agency when EMS Corps launched. "It turns out that young people who have faced adversity make amazing superheroes. When you put them on an ambulance and teach them how to save lives they are amazing at it."

The state's investment in EMS Corps is part of the Workforce for a Healthy California (W4HC) initiative launched by Gov. Gavin Newsom as an effort to address health care labor shortages in key areas while creating pathways to family-sustaining careers.

Becoming an EMT is a gateway to a health or emergency services career, Briscoe said, adding, "There are very few pathways for young people from low-income communities to get to paramedic or fire. The Emergency Medical Service is 85 percent white. The kids we train are almost all black and brown."

Alex and his colleagues who started EMS Corps now run a non-profit entity that is facilitating the corps' expansion across the state and nation.

The first California expansion market, the City of Oxnard, expects to train about 80 young people over the next two and a half years using the state funding and additional dollars provided by the state t

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California Firefighter Joint Apprenticeship Committee for apprentice training and recruitment. In addition to preparing students to take the EMT test, Oxnard will train graduates to test for firefighting jobs. It has accepted applicants who don't have high school diplomas and will work with charter schools to help them make up credit deficiencies.

"The biggest thing for me is the opportunity to change entire families over the course of several generations as a result of getting one of those family members in a position to have a higher-earning career," said Jaime Villa, EMS Coordinator for the Oxnard Fire Department.

Training will include mentoring and life skills, Villa said. "We're planning on doing everything from showing them how to shine their boots to how you cook in a fire station."

While the Oxnard program is currently funded for two and a half years, Villa said his department is already working with funding partners to make it permanent.

Abby Snay, deputy secretary for workforce strategy at the Labor and Workforce Agency, said the EMS Corps' strong outcomes in Alameda made it a good candidate for state funding as California moved to expand apprenticeships and earn and learn programs under Governor Gavin Newsom.

"The EMS Corps clearly stood out as a model that could be replicated around the state both as a way to address labor shortages in emergency medical services and to provide pathways to good jobs for young people coming out of the criminal justice and foster care systems or having other challenges to employment," Snay said.

The five-month-long EMS Corps program combines rigorous emergency medical training with wraparound supports, including life coaching, hea

ling circles, mentorship, job readiness training, job placement and post-program support for up to 20 young people at a time - about 40 percent of whom have been involved with the juvenile justice system.

Participants also receive a stipend, currently $1,500 a month in Alameda County.

John Marshall, 32, went through the EMS Corps program in 2014 and is now a firefighter in Oakland. He said the stipend and promise of guaranteed employment is key to recruiting young people who need to earn while they learn in order to survive. Marshall, who grew up in the foster care system, said he had just gotten off probation and was scraping by doing odd jobs when he was recruited to EMS Corps.

After graduation, he worked on an ambulance and in a Kaiser hospital before getting hired by the Oakland Fire Department. He has also taught medical skills to high schoolers in the Oakland Unified School District and recruited and mentored participants in the EMS Corps.

"Being a firefighter in the city that I actually grew up in is being able to respond to people in an authentic way," Marshall said. "The connection piece is huge for me, being able to develop a larger meaning and purpose for the job is huge for me. That's one reason I love being a firefighter in Oakland."

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