Community Health Center receives training grant

The Community Health Center, which operates clinics around the state including sites in New London and Groton, has received a three-year, $1.5 million grant from the Health Resources Services Administration to help health centers around the country train health care professionals, the center announced Monday. 

CHC said the grant funds would be used to:

• Establish postgraduate training programs for nurse practitioners, postdoctoral clinical psychologists, and psychiatric nurse practitioners, doubling the number of health centers with residency programs.

• Train health center representatives who want to begin or advance training programs for health profession students. Currently, about 66 percent of health centers train students.

• Develop or enhance teaching agreements with academic institutions to improve their training programs.

• Implement practice transformation measures to help health care team members practice at the highest level and improve the functioning of the team.

The training and technical assistance will be provided through a series of webinars and learning collaborative sessions using live and recorded telehealth technology, CHC said.

“This grant will allow us to continue to help health centers address the near- and long-term shortage of health care providers by establishing their own post-graduate training programs and by advancing the use of team-based care,” said Margaret Flinter, senior vice president and clinical director of CHC, who is co-principal investigator on the grant with Kerry Bamrick, senior program administrator for the Weitzman Institute.