VWHS CEO Arnoldi selected to Health Center Workforce Diversity group

ALAMOSA — Valley-Wide Health Systems recently announced that CEO Jania Arnoldi was 1 of 25 people selected to serve on the Health Center Workforce Diversity Data and Metrics National Advisory group.

“Representing Valley-Wide and Southern Colorado in a nationwide advisory committee is an honor that I am excited to be a part of. It is so important for rural communities to be represented at the national level, and I am humbled by the opportunity and will work to represent us well,” said Arnoldi.

This group will be working with The National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC) in collaboration with The George Washington University (GWU) Fitzhaugh Mullan Institue for Health Workforce Equity.

This advisory group aims to build a data collection tool to objectively measure the workforce diversity in Community Health Centers across the country. The committee hopes Community Health Centers will be able to use this tool to measure the diversity of their workforce on many levels, including socioeconomic, ethnicity, gender, race, sexual orientation, languages, and more. This tool will also support the creation of best practices to recruit, hire and retain people who bring diversity of thought and experiences to the work Community Health Centers do. After this data has been collected and analyzed, health centers that did well will be identified, and their best practices will be shared at state and national conferences.

“Diversity in the Community Health Center workforce is important in order to better serve the community members who receive our care,” said Arnoldi. “I believe participating on this advisory committee will allow our organization, from rural Colorado, to be on the cutting edge of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts as well as ensure we have the correct hiring, recruiting and retention practices in place.”

The National Advisory Group will be meeting periodically starting in February through the end of the calendar year.