What We Do
One pipeline, three stages: explore the work, experience it, and keep advancing once you are in it.
Nine Programs, Three Stages
A rural county rarely solves a workforce shortage by recruiting from outside it. It solves it by finding the students who are already here, showing them the work early enough to matter, and making the training reachable without leaving the region.
Every program below is one stage of that. Choose a stage to see its programs.
Explore
Four programs for high school students, seeing the work before they choose it.
Moving Onward and Upward
A school year of rotations and mentoring inside a working health system. Three certifications, a stipend, and ACT or SAT preparation.
Health Professions Virtual Job Shadow
Online job shadowing alongside working clinicians, with no travel to a host site. Fifty places across all 23 counties.
Health Careers and College Expo
Our annual expo at Glenville State University. Colleges, health systems and hands-on stations in one room.
Nursing Academy
Several days each July inside WVU Medicine Camden Clark, for students exploring nursing specifically.
Experience
Two programs for health professions students already on their way in.
WV AHEC Rural Community Scholars
The statewide AHEC Scholars program: a two-year commitment with rural training and a completion award. Opens in a new tab.
Northern WV AHEC Rural Immersion
Two or three days in a rural community, following one health problem through the clinics, agencies and people who meet it.
Advance
Three programs of continuing education, for the professionals doing the work here now.
Mental Health First Aid
Certification in the Adult, Youth or Teen curriculum, taught at your site or ours, for schools, employers and community groups.
Drug Diversion Education
Pain management and opioid prescribing sessions for licensed health professionals, held inside the service area.
Project ECHO Tele-mentoring
Case-based tele-mentoring connecting rural providers with specialist teams, so the expertise travels instead of the patient. Opens in a new tab.
Why it is Built as a Pipeline
Each stage hands off to the next. A student who shadows a nurse in tenth grade is the same person who might take an AHEC Scholars placement at university, and the same person who might sit in a Drug Diversion session fifteen years later, still working here.
That is the point of running all nine together rather than as separate offerings.
