What Tech Inclusion Efforts Can Learn From Health Care Pathways

by Rose DeLeon-Foote

Hack the Hood members during a recent visit to GitHub

The San Francisco Bay Area is known for its amazing culture. San Francisco and Oakland, in particular, are where city culture and identity is based around a distinct mixture of identities that often goes beyond racial or economic expectations. The neighborhoods, the music, the style, and the food (to say the least) are able to be here because of the most important and beautiful part, the people.
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As tech has settled into the Bay Area, conversations on diversity, gentrification, tech inclusivity and education have spread among the locals. While tech moving in definitely presents benefits for the general economy of the Bay, there are many troubling phenomenon trailing along with it that are pushing out the amazing people who make the Bay what it is. This modern colonization has led to the creation of organizations, like Hack the Hood, who attempt to shift the balance of benefit back towards the center of the racial and socioeconomic spectrum.

Workforce development is the strategy many industries are using to increase access to well-paying skilled jobs for low income people of color. Local healthcare providers, in particular, have been making strides in planning workforce partnerships in an effort to increase hiring men of color in skilled positions with potential for promotions and living wages. Thinking about what strategies the healthcare industry is taking can help tech leaders see what engaging with communities and organizations looks like, and can help tech take initiative in working towards more diversity and inclusivity.

The following are three things happening in healthcare that can help tech in its path towards diversity and inclusion:

1. Industry leaders actively participate in diversity problem solving Local health care providers have built a cohort of representatives that meet on a regular basis to discuss solutions for the lack of hiring diversity with community stakeholders. This commitment to simply meet and discuss shows the beginning of health care leaders’ investment in industry progress, and allows seeds of action to be planted.
2. Create better school-to-career pipelines – In the Minneapolis – St. Paul area, a group of educational and health care institutions, called the Central Corridor Anchor Partnership (CCAP), have come together to create career pipelines that range from a year of vocational training to years of medical school, but all clearly lead to well paying positions. You can find a graphic depicting these pathways here.
3. Assess and shift hiring policies that create unnecessary barriers  John Hopkins University Hospitals in Baltimore, MD changed their hiring practices to individually review the criminal backgrounds of qualified candidates rather than automatically deny anyone with a criminal background. This has led to an increase in hiring for people of color in Baltimore, as well as a lowered recidivism rate for those hired. Many community based organizations in the Baltimore area now work to train people with past offenses to become qualified for positions at John Hopkins as a means of workforce development and community re-entry.

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Note: Rose DeLeon-Foote recently relocated to the Raleigh-Durham area after working with Hack the Hood for a little over a year in a number of different roles. She completed her Master's degree in Public Policy from Mills in May, and has a Bachelor's in English from Berkeley. She has a career background in nonprofit program management, database administration and analysis, as well as, research and program facilitation; her graduate thesis was on facilitating pathways to healthcare careers for low-income men of color.

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