Baltimore area hospitals were facing critical staffing shortages in certain high-skill jobs, while many low-income workers were struggling to get by in dead-end jobs with no benefits or hope of advancement. In 2003, an informal network of funders supporting different approaches to workforce development got together and collectively said: "What's wrong with this picture?"

These funders brought hospitals, public agencies, educational institutions, and community organizations together to map out a plan to train area workers to move into careers in these high-shortage hospital positions. The initial group of funders, which includes the Abell Foundation, Annie E. Casey Foundation, Aaron Straus & Lillie Straus Foundation, and the Open Society Institute-Baltimore, surveyed the scene and realized many programs were in place to provide training and support.  What was needed was an organization to knit these resources together to prepare workers for these critical hospital opportunities.

Hence, the Baltimore Alliance for Careers in Healthcare was born. 

The Alliance integrates several key strategies to help hospitals meet their current and future labor needs while giving area workers the training and support to develop skills and be successful. These strategies include career mapping, a work-based learning program that trains unskilled hospital employees to be nursing assistants and patient care technicians, and "bridge" programs that help hospitals upgrade the skills and education of employees who need short-term remediation before advancing on the job and/or entering into training or college-level work.

One of the most innovative efforts launched by the Alliance has been instituting career coaches to improve the odds of retention and advancement among workers who start out in entry-level skilled health care jobs.  Career coaches are now serving more than 400 workers across six hospitals, and in the period between September 2005 and May 2007, 40 percent of these employees experienced an average wage gain of 14 percent.

Not only are the original funders still partnering with the Alliance, but additional funders like the Alvin and Fannie Blaustein Thalheimer Foundation and the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation are also lending support.