National Area Health Education Center Organization (NAO)

The AHEC (Area Health Education Centers) program was developed by Congress in 1971 to recruit, train and retain a health professions workforce committed to underserved populations. The HETC (Health Education Training Centers) program was created in 1989 to provide programs for specific populations with persistent, severe unmet health needs. Together the AHEC and HETC programs help bring the resources of academic medicine to bear in addressing local community health needs. By their very structure, AHECs and HETCs are able to respond in a flexible and creative manner in adapting national health initiatives to the particular needs of the nation’s most vulnerable communities.

Today, 50 AHEC programs with more than 200 centers and a dozen HETCs operate in almost every state and the District of Columbia. Approximately 120 medical schools and 600 nursing and allied health schools work collaboratively with AHECs and HETCs to improve health for underserved and under-represented populations.

Distortions in our health care system result in marked inequities in access to and quality of health care services, which are reflected in unacceptable racial and ethnic disparities in health status and the under-representation of minority and disadvantaged individuals in the health workforce. AHEC and HETC programs play a key role in correcting these inequities and strengthening the nation’s health care safety net. Through community-based interdisciplinary training programs, AHECs and HETCs identify, motivate, recruit, train, and retain a health care workforce committed to underserved populations

For more information on NAO please visit www.nationalahec.org