Exciting things happening in Rhode Island

This post comes to us from our organizational member in Rhode Island, Jill D'Errico. Jill is a Senior Public Health Promotion Specialist for Rhode Island's Office of Primary Care and Rural Health.

The Rhode Island State Office of Rural Health (RISORH) is excited to be a part of the 3RNet community!

Our office has made workforce recruitment and retention a top priority. 3RNet allows us to connect our facilities and better understand the workforce. By providing bi-monthly emails with potential candidates attached to our stakeholders, we are getting the word out that we are here to help and care about the workforce in Rhode Island.

We began outreach with the Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) last fall. These face-to-face meetings allowed us the opportunity to hear the needs of these health centers, and see what we could do to help.  Some key information from these centers included recruitment and retention help. The RISORH created materials with 3RNet and has provided technical assistance to the health centers in regards to this. As a result, we had 13 times as many jobs posted this past year! 

In addition to working with health centers, we met personally with all State Loan Repayment Recipients to tell them about our work and listen to their goals and priorities for their continuing work in our state. We will be holding a celebration to honor them this summer. We have been tracking each time a candidate reaches out to us. Based on our conversation with the candidate, we follow up to see if they have registered with 3RNet. We consider these referrals to the 3RNet site as invaluable to the candidate and to the rural workforce, both locally and nationally.

We have also worked with 3RNet to add our names to any brochures and informational items that 3RNet creates. This has helped us at outreach events, and the materials have received much positive feedback.

One project that we hope to accomplish this next cycle will be web-based health center training. The RISORH will be working with 3RNet to develop training for the health centers on utilizing 3RNet and on successful retention efforts.

We thank Jill and her colleagues in Rhode Island for their support of 3RNet and their dedication to connecting health care professionals with jobs in areas that need them most!