Our Story
The Na Lei Wili AHEC opened in 1997 to serve both Kauai, a medically underserved population, and three community health centers on Oahu. The Na Lei Wili AHEC has a 9 member managing board of consumers and healthcare providers. Fran Becker, the Na Lei Wili AHEC Director, is a community services worker and pastor with 1 year of AHEC experience.
In 2002, Na Lei Wili AHEC developed successful health careers program, “Grow Our Own Healers” an innovative, proactive approach to addressing the health workforce shortage through long term health career exploration, tiered (also called near-peer) mentoring, community health education, and community service. The program includes a two-week Summer Health Academy (SHA) program for 25 middle school students to learn about health careers. Students have demonstrated up to a 24% increase in knowledge of health careers as a result of this program.
Na Le Wili also supports the Health Occupation for Teens (HOT) program for students at Waimea High school. These students participate in weekly career exploration activities, modeled after the Health Occupations Students of America program, attend community health fairs, gain volunteer experiences at the local hospital and assist with and mentor the SHA students.
In addition, Na Lei Wili AHEC has been supporting training at rural and underserved sites for medical students since 1997 and will work to expand this training as well as introduce caregiver training to help increase the state’s capacity to care for the aging population. Na Lei Wili AHEC’s primary focus under Model AHEC funding will be health careers recruitment and training.
