NEW MILFORD — A team of health care and education professionals and town personnel are working in New Milford to promote health care as a viable career and recruit young people into the workforce.
The group, which includes New Milford school board, Nuvance Health and Western Connecticut State University, aims to target students and their parents to convince young people to enter the field. The goal is to add more jobs in the medical field, from certified nursing assistants to doctors, specialists and other health care professionals.
The team formed after Mayor Pete Bass said the town hired Dale Kroop, owner of Community Resource Management LLC, in Hamden, as a facilitator for “putting together all the parties when it came to looking at creating an extended health cluster in New Milford.”
At the Dec. 12 New Milford Town Council meeting, Kroop spoke about the health cluster initiative, saying the first part, which started a year ago, involved doing a study in health sciences related to health care, biotech and STEM-related fields. In addition to showing the largest growth areas in health sciences are in health care, Kroop said the study showed all the earnings possibilities in health care vocations.
The next part of the initiative, Kroop said, was to form a cluster of professionals in the health care field. Throughout 2022, he said a group was formed that included professionals from Nuvance Health, regional rehabilitation centers, the New Milford Board of Education, Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, and Naugatuck Valley Community College, which has campuses in Danbury and Waterbury. Nuvance Health runs seven hospitals in New York and Connecticut, including New Milford Hospital.
Over the course of the year, Kroop said the cluster had many meetings spent “getting to know each other and figuring out a way to bring the young people to their places to get training and promote health care as a good earning, a good way to make a living.”
Those in the cluster came up with a series of recommendations for promoting health care as a vocation. Recommendations included creating a trained pipeline of young and old workers in various areas of health care; engaging parents at the high school to help them understand what opportunities there are to promote health care as an occupation for their children; and connecting health care professionals with local parents to create a plan for outreach and placement for students.
Among other issues discussed at the cluster’s meetings, most of the members felt the town needs an advocate “with their boots on the ground” in Town Hall, Kroop said.
He said he asked the group how the town might pay for a health care advocate because it’s rare for any town to have a paid workforce person.
“What it came down to was working hard with Pete and me and the Regional Workforce Board to find a way to have somebody here,” Kroop said.
He added the board committed to having someone work one-on-one with the town through the mayor’s office, boards and commissions, and local parents to promote health care as a viable workforce option for young people.
“At the end of the day, this was really a collaborative process to get all these people to talk together,” Kroop said.
Kroop’s own task to form the group is complete, but the cluster will remain in place.
“I think they’re going to stay together strong and I know the mayor’s been on all the calls, he’s heard all the good ideas and the good feelings about wanting to work together,” he said.
Bass said that once he gets the draft final plan from Kroop, he plans to send it to the Town Council and post the plan on the town website.
“Sounds like there’s some good organization happening and the key is going to be executing those actions from here,” Councilman Chris Cosgrove said.
