In Prince George’s County, the partnership between CCI Health Services and Employ Prince George’s (EPG) is rewriting the story of how Community Health Centers (CHCs) address one of the most urgent challenges in primary care: workforce shortages. By blending health care delivery with workforce development, the collaboration is not just filling jobs, it’s creating career pathways that start in high schools and extend through adulthood, reaching deep into the community and building long-term resilience.
A Workforce Crisis Meets Local Innovation
Across the country CHCs have grappled with the aftershocks of the COVID-19 pandemic. Retirements, burnout, and departures have left centers struggling to recruit and retain medical assistants, clinical support staff, and other frontline workers. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) estimates that by 2037, demand for health care providers will require an additional 68,000 primary care physicians, 9,000 dentists, over 100,000 mental health professionals, 100,000 medical assistants and 32,000 dental assistants.
“We feel like we’re just in a never-ending shortage of health care workforce,” said Jessica Wilson, Chief Strategy and Operations Officer at CCI Health Services. “Coming out of COVID, we had a lot of individuals, just across the health care sector, retire or leave. So, what do we do now?”
For CCI, the answer was clear: be the solution and grow your own. The idea wasn’t new in the Community Health Center Movement, but transformative for CCI. The opportunity to make it real came through conversations with Employ Prince George’s, a workforce development agency with deep ties to the county’s schools, employers, and job seekers.
“I basically tracked [EPG CEO] Walter Simmons down on LinkedIn,” Wilson recalled. “I knew that I wanted this partnership to happen. We serve the same communities, and I could see the vision: what if we built one of their workforce hubs inside our health center?”
The EPG Advantage
Employ Prince George’s positions itself as “the bridge to connect businesses and job seekers to employment opportunities,” explained Jennifer Ricks, EPG’s Director of Youth Services. “We identify the six in-demand industries across the county, and health care is clearly one of them. Our role is to educate the community on those pathways, remove barriers, and make sure people don’t have a reason to drop out.” That support might mean covering transportation, professional attire, or access to technology, anything that helps job seekers stay the course.
Briana Capuano, EPG’s Director of Career Services, added: “We do in-depth assessments to evaluate people’s skills and interests, then connect them to programs that align. We have 10 different programs, including six industry bridge programs. Our Capital Area Healthcare Alliance (CAHA) is specifically focused on health care. And our demographic programs target populations like veterans, returning citizens, senior workers, or immigrants and refugees. We’re intentional about meeting people where they are.”
That intentionality links with CCI’s mission as a CHC. “When you walk around our health centers, you see staff who come from our communities,” Wilson said. “They look like our communities; they live in our communities. It’s so important to make that connection for youth—to show them, ‘this is what you could be.’”
A Hub Inside a Health Center
The idea of co-locating an EPG hub inside a CCI facility was bold but was a natural fit. EPG already had hubs for construction at the Building Trade Center and reentry services at the Adam Bridge Center.
“Collectively, we had that vision to say, EPG is serving the same clients that CCI is serving,” Wilson said. “So, it’s a population that can benefit from both services. Together, we can design, build, and develop the health care workforce of the future.”
The hub model unlocks practical synergies. Job seekers who come to CCI for health care can now walk into the same building and access career counseling, training scholarships, or job placement services. Conversely, those who enter through EPG are exposed to the full scope of services that CCI provides—medical, dental, behavioral health, pharmacy, and specialty care.
“When you start doing hands-on training here, you’re not just learning in a classroom,” Wilson explained. “You’re getting maximum exposure. You see what an on-site lab looks like, how a pharmacy operates, or what community-based behavioral health really means. That’s an experience you won’t get anywhere else.”
Building Pipelines from High School On
A central piece of the partnership is the connection to Prince George’s County Public Schools. EPG has career coaches in 74 schools across the county, helping students prepare for the workforce.
“We already see behind-the-scenes field trips where students can take what they’re learning in the classroom and apply it in immersive experiences here at CCI,” Ricks said. “They’ll hear from professionals, ask real questions, and see possibilities they never imagined.”
Wilson emphasized the importance of this exposure: “Rarely do you come out of high school or college saying, ‘I want to work in a health center,’ because you don’t really know much about them. We want to change that. We want pipelines that start in high school—or even middle school—that lead students into community health careers.”
That vision is already becoming reality. With EPG’s help, CCI is launching a medical assistant training program in partnership with Skilltrade. Students will take classes, complete practicums inside CCI clinics, and—ideally—decide to stay on as employees. “The hope is they love it so much they want to be hired by CCI and embedded right back into their community,” Wilson said.
Removing Barriers, Expanding Access
One hallmark of both organizations is a commitment to health care access for all. For EPG, that means financial support, specialized programs for populations who face barriers to health care, and career competency maps that show pathways from entry-level positions to advanced roles.
For CCI, it means providing wraparound health care to more than 40,000 patients annually across Maryland and Washington, D.C.
“If you don’t have a healthy community, you don’t have a thriving economy,” Wilson said. “Workforce and health centers go hand in hand, because you cannot have one without the other.”
A Ripple Effect in the Community
What excites Ricks most is the ripple effect. “It’s not only going to affect the students, but their parents and families,” she said. “When coaches get a hold of this center as a resource, it will no longer be the best kept secret, for sure.”
From a communications perspective, Marisol Euceda, CCI’s Communications Director, sees the partnership as a way to strengthen patient education.
“One of the most complicated things to explain to people is the health care system itself,” Euceda said. “By starting in the schools, we can help kids understand why primary care matters—why you see your doctor for prevention, not just when you’re sick. That knowledge ripples into families and shifts how communities think about health care.”
A Model for the Future
The CCI–EPG partnership demonstrates what’s possible when health care and workforce leaders align around a shared vision. It addresses immediate staffing shortages and inspires the next generation of health care professionals. It removes barriers and underscores that shows that the future of community health lies not just in treating patients, but in cultivating the workforce who will care for them.
As Wilson summed it up: “Once you’re exposed to a health center, it’s hard not to see the joys and benefits. Some of the patients we serve wouldn’t have access to high-quality care at all if we didn’t exist. This partnership ensures that future generations will not only receive that care but also deliver it.”