This is my dream job. If I could write on paper what situation I would want upon graduating from nursing school, it would literally be this job. >> I was seeing myself working with a group that would provide the kind of care I knew I wanted to provide. Doing so in a community health center just seemed to make the best sense for me. Working at a community health center, there's just this different sense of what you're doing. We're doing our best to take care of people who really need our help. >> I've been with Urban Health Plan as a physician assistant for five years. You have to have empathy and you have to come with a sense of humility, knowing that what you do is very important. >> The CDC reports that community health is one of the settings where people have the greatest impact. At the end of the day, we make the biggest impact in the community for the people with the greatest need. >> Community health centers are the foundation of our healthcare model as a whole and not just in urban areas, but also in more rural areas where it's not really so easy to access healthcare. >> So we have pediatricians, internal medicine, family medicine, dental. We also have behavioral health, licensed community social workers as well as psychiatry. >> Everything that I could need to provide the best care I possibly could, I could find that in the community health center. >> We will often encounter patients who have not had healthcare for months or even many years. And so it's really a clean slate. And in many ways, it's helping them to engage with the healthcare system. >> When you're talking about healthcare, it's not just your medicine and your physicals. It's this whole biopsychosocial model of addressing all of these other issues. >> Things that sometimes can be uncomfortable to talk about, where do I get food? Where do I get clothing? Community health centers, we don't care. We just wanna help you. >> Our job is to be comprehensive. Our job is to make sure that we treat you as part of our community. >> We have community health workers who really specialize in reaching out to a lot of these underserved populations, populations that you know that they're there but you don't really see. >> In New York State alone, there are 900 community health centers. The skills that you learn are very core to social determinants of health, to health education, to preventative medicine that you don't really get in the hospital setting. And they are transferable anywhere that you want to move to. >> There's so much value in you as a patient just coming to a place where you can relate to the people that are overseeing your care. When patients come here, they need to feel like they're home. And they need to feel like they're talking to a friend so that they're more likely to disclose any personal stuff that they may not be comfortable disclosing to any other person. >> So I'm actually a first generation Mexican American. The population we deal with is underserved. Sometimes they lack the resources to be able to get medical attention that they need. I can really get to that one on one level with them. They can definitely see me as someone that they can come to if they ever need anything with health care. >> Health centers give you the diversity of thought and health experiences as well as life experiences. >> One of the criteria for us is do you have a passion for this community? Because I can't teach you that no more than I can teach you being tall. >> From that I can tell whether or not they're going to be able to connect with the community and connect with our patients. >> The Payette Community Health Care Centers are not always the highest, but we provide great, awesome benefits here. Currently right now here it's like a nine to five schedule. It's Monday through Friday, Saturdays here and there. And our health benefits are out of this world. >> It's really important to understand the whole picture. Retirement, bonuses, time off, paid time off. Are they reimbursing for continuing medical education? Our sites are lucky enough to be in the program where they help you pay back your student loans with the public service loan forgiveness program, which is huge. >> We intentionally try to be flexible with people as their family needs evolve, as their personal interests evolve. And that's allowed us to retain a lot of our staff. >> One of the things that makes a community health center different from other medical centers is it's really set up to be a one stop shop. >> It's true team based care. To me that's a huge pro, because I don't have to manage all the aspects of a patient's care. I have access to a nutritionist or a social worker or a health educator. >> We have developed telemedicine to a very high degree. >> The patients really appreciate not having to travel to certain places, even if a provider is not available, they know they can see somebody else. That kind of sends a sense of collaboration between providers. >> It certainly makes our colleagues who are working in the more rural settings feel more supported. >> During the times of COVID when everything went through remote and telehealth, we create an entire new department just to handle that. >> I love the people I work with. There's this feeling that you're all trying to get the best outcome possible for that patient or person. >> There's just so much knowledge here and there's so many amazing providers here. There's always somebody I can ask who I know is up to date on the latest knowledge and is happy to answer my question. >> We're trying to make sure that everybody has what they need in order to help the patients have what they need. >> It's really, really good to be able to work alongside someone else that's here pulling the same weight that you're pulling day by day. >> There are a number of physicians or clinicians and staff who have been there 20 plus years. For community health centers that's serving hard medical questions, hard social issues, it's amazing that we don't have a lot of turnover. >> It's really important as leaders in a community health center to open our doors and to really foster the next growth of leaders. >> We're big on education and taking you as far as you wanna go. >> Part of our success has been not only hiring people that are of the community and maybe even have experienced our healthcare services personally, but also then promoting from within. We have a formal mentorship and training program for leadership here. >> There's so much growth within community health. One of the benefits that it provides is that you can really get a 360 degree view of basically the operations and how the place runs. And because of that, we wore many different hats. I just don't do management, but I'm also working on the floor. I also do quality improvement stuff. I also do operational stuff. So those are all so many great things that I can add to my resume. >> I started off as a health educator and then going to PA school and then coming right back to the same exact community. Everybody was so happy to see my growth and they were so excited for me. >> We have a few of our physicians on staff who were with us as med students. They've worked as MAs, they would volunteer in the emergency room. And now they're part of our team. And that story has been repeated many times over with our nursing staff as well. We like to think that means that people get a little introduction to what we do. They like it and then they wanna come back. >> In the nine years that I have been here, I have grown tremendously. I am a LPN. I am our vaccine coordinator. I am our COVID nurse. Now I'm back in school for my RN, finishing up my second semester. >> If you're a nurse interested in community health, there's tons of room for growth, not only clinically and in nursing administration, but also in health education and patient empowerment. There's a lot of opportunity for lots of different ways in which to expand your career in community health. >> I think it's an honor and a privilege that I do not take for granted and take very humbly to be able to participate in something so personal as someone's health care, especially to folks who have been traditionally marginalized in health care spaces. >> You just don't know who you're going to impact. And the only way you're going to do that is to do your best every single day. >> We work every day to see the patient. All of us have a role to play. And my job is to conduct and to facilitate one sound, which is to see these patients. >> I can guarantee you, you will not go home and say work was like it was the day before. It's always something different. >> It is not an exaggeration and perhaps a little cheesy to say that I absolutely love the people that I work with and I love the patients that we care for. >> I'm satisfied doing this for the next 25 years if I'm fortunate. I wouldn't do anything else. >> I became a nurse to do this work and I've never found a place that I've been happier to do it.