Pritzker Traubert Foundation awards $5 million for City Colleges of Chicago, Cook County Health partnership
The Pritzker Traubert Foundation is awarding $5 million to City Colleges of Chicago and Cook County Health to form a partnership aimed at accelerating job placement to meet a high demand of health care jobs.
The investment is a result of the Pritzker Traubert Foundation’s inaugural Chicago Talent Challenge, which launched last year as an open call to organizations across Chicago for ideas to advance economic opportunities through workforce development. More than 50 applicant teams from more than 200 organizations submitted proposals for the challenge.
City Colleges of Chicago students will be trained through HealthCatalyst Chicago and placed into 1,000 health care jobs within Cook County Health over the next three years. Another 400 jobs will be filled each year after that, according to the foundation, which is led by Penny Pritzker and her husband, Bryan Traubert.
“We wanted to focus on where there is demand, where there are great jobs,” Cindy Moelis, Pritzker Traubert Foundation president, told the Sun-Times.
“We know that healthcare really requires skilled labor, certifications, support, and it’s a terrific area to encourage more people to come into this area, get great paying jobs. And it also helps our ecosystem in healthcare,” Moelis said.
The American Hospital Association projects a national shortage of about 100,000 critical health care workers by 2028.
Entry-level jobs available through the program include medical assistants, patient care technicians, medical laboratory technicians and nurses.
The partnership is estimated to save Cook County Health about $1 million per year through hiring full-time workers, reducing the system’s use of temporary staffing agencies to fill essential roles.
“This is an opportunity to be more intentional about hiring, to hire folks from the community that may bring deeper cultural competence to the work that they’re providing in the hospital setting and importantly reduce their reliance on this really expensive staffing model,” said Andy Beideman, Pritzker Traubert Foundation chief strategy officer.
Enrollment at City Colleges of Chicago’s seven schools, which total around 73,000 this year — and has surpassed pre-pandemic levels — is also expected to increase because of the job placement program, City Colleges Chancellor Juan Salgado said. Nearly 17% of City Colleges students are enrolled in the health sciences focus area.
“What’s different about this is we’re going to be solving for the workforce needs and the organizational needs of an entire health system — arguably the most important healthcare system that we have to serve Cook County residents, and especially those that are uninsured or limited insured or Medicaid recipients,” Salgado said.
A $250 million investment into the school system’s health program at Malcolm X College in 2015 is what largely set the school up for growth and its ability to sustain a yearly partnership with Cook County Health, Salgado said.
But to sustain the 400 annual job placements after the program’s first three years, City Colleges is adding new cohorts for six medical career paths that will give students hands-on experience at hospitals, where they can eventually explore employment opportunities. City Colleges will also use potential new tuition revenue to expand its training capacity.
The leaders guiding the new partnership say they hope the collaboration between the college and health systems serve as a model for similar programs throughout the country.
“We’re going to have other health systems that are going to want to do this as a result, and so we think this is going to be a model that will help us to further meet the overall demand in the industry,” Salgado said. “And at the end, they lead to even more people getting access to these well-paying careers that will provide for their families and ensure a better quality of life for those people.”