The RP3 Rural Health Care Partnerships Toolkit provides a comprehensive guide to how rural-serving community colleges can strengthen the healthcare workforce through strategic partnerships. The documented successes and ongoing initiatives highlight the importance of collaboration in addressing workforce shortages and improving healthcare access in rural North Carolina.

The toolkit highlights collaborative partnerships across North Carolina that are aiming to meet health care labor market needs and lays out four health care workforce opportunities: 

• Reducing the high costs and logistical complexities of launching and expanding in-demand health care programs,
• Engaging the next generation of health care workers,
• Supporting students’ success in health care programs by eliminating barriers to entry and completion, and
• Creating seamless pathways for students to continue their health sciences education.

The toolkit offers numerous partnership strategies that are grouped according to the health care workforce opportunity they address. For example, one strategy explains how health care providers partner with colleges to support the growth of in-demand programs by covering or subsidizing faculty salaries. Another highlights colleges that partner with each other to jointly offer high-cost health care courses.

After each partnership strategy, the toolkit then lists colleges deploying specific strategies and provides additional information about the partnership. There are nearly 50 examples of specific partnerships among the rural-serving institutions. 

The Rural Health Care Partnerships Toolkit was created by the Rural Postsecondary Practices Partnership (RP3) , a collaborative group including the North Carolina Community College System (NCCCS), the Belk Center for Community College Leadership and Research, EducationNC, and myFutureNC.