A Health Care Career Before College
June 26, 2026
Central Texas Healthcare Academy prepares students for certification in nursing and health IT careers.
Ashley King points to a moment a few years ago that changed everything. That’s when leaders at Workforce Solutions Capital Area and the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation traveled to Dallas to get an inside look at an innovative charter school program.
At the time, workforce shortages were crushing the health care industry (Note: they still are).
What they found, however, was a unique proposition: a health care high school preparing students in future careers like nursing, biomedical science, and diagnostic services.
In 2023, Bloomberg Philanthropies awarded a $14.9 million grant to Baylor, Scott & White and Uplift Education, a 23,000-student public charter network in North Texas. Together, they launched the Uplift Heights Healthcare Institute, a preparatory school that sought to develop the next wave of health care workers before they ever applied to their first jobs.
The tour was an eye-opening experience.
“We asked ourselves, ‘How can we do this?’” said King, director of health care partnerships at Workforce Solutions Capital Area. “We reached out to industry partners, hospital systems and tried to determine viable career opportunities that met student’s needs.”
Next came time to build the idea locally.
Moving The Health Care Pipeline Forward
In May, a few years after that initial tour in Dallas, Workforce Solutions Capital Area rolled out the Central Texas Healthcare Partnership, in collaboration with Pflugerville ISD and Hays CISD, and officially took the next step toward an innovative program offering.
Behind $10 million in investment from a series of funders, including $6.3 million from the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, another $3.2 million from Bloomberg Philanthropies, and $740,000 from the St. David’s Foundation, the Central Texas Healthcare Academy, which began in 2018 and caters to K-12 initiatives, received a shot in the arm.
Before a packed audience inside the Austin Community College Regional Sciences Regional Simulation Center on the Highland Campus, area leaders from higher education, health care, and workforce development outlined the future of the school and explained how the workforce pipeline could change. The Central Texas Healthcare Partnership includes major health care systems such as Central Health, Ascension Seton, St. David’s HealthCare and Baylor, Scott & White.
“By giving students a pathway to a family-sustaining wage at 18—not at 22, not at 24, but at 18— we’re not just going to change their lives, we’re going to change their future family’s lives and generations to come,” said ACC Chancellor Dr. Russell Lowery-Hart.
The four-year academy, which will offer free tuition and dual-enrollment credit through ACC, will prepare high school students in grades nine through 12 for careers in professional nursing, medical assistant, health information technology, and surgical and radiation technology.
Each student is expected to graduate with a high school diploma, and a health care certification. The idea is to keep local students at local institutions, thereby strengthening the local pipeline of health care workers.
“As our system grows, we have to meet the health care demands of the Travis County area and the Central Texas region,” Central Health Director of Education and Research Carol Wang, PhD, said. “We’re seeing this as a long-term investment in our community and our workforce development.”
Changing Health Care from the Ground Up
While jobs in health care have increased in Texas over the last three decades, the state’s workforce hasn’t met the growing demand. The Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA) projects an 8% shortage of nurses nationally in 2028. Texas Health and Human Services, meanwhile, projects shortages of licensed practical nurses and registered nurses statewide by 2032.
In recent years, Central Health has worked to solve its own workforce challenges, from a partnership with ACC on a medical assistant training program (now in its seventh cohort), to an innovative employer-payor model through Western Governors University and Social Finance. Central Health’s Department of Education and Research partnered with Workforce Solutions Capital Area on the Central Texas Healthcare Academy.
“For students who go on to complete healthcare course credit at ACC, we’re taking that a step further, bringing them into the Central Health system for hands-on experiential learning,” Wang said. “We believe that expanding opportunity and building a stronger workforce means better care for the community we serve.”
Here’s how the academy will work:
Freshmen at Hays CISD and Pflugerville ISD will enroll in introductory classes, prerequisites, and labs to gain hands-on experience and gain knowledge on a variety of health care roles and opportunities.
Sophomores will continue learning with more hands-on work and will select their career pathways for their final two years.
Juniors will move forward on career pathways through specific health care tracks. Internships will be available through health care partner organizations.
Seniors will earn up to 36 dual-enrollment credits with ACC through hands-on clinical training. Students will need to pass Texas Success Initiative (TSI) assessments before they are able to take entry-level college coursework.
Some pathways may allow students to enter the workforce after graduation with a health care certification, while other students may continue their path at ACC or another four-year university.
Central Health and other health care partners will provide lessons from clinical spaces, while ACC as , the supporting higher-ed institution , will bring its lecturers to each high school. In 2028, when a new campus in Hays County opens, the Hays CISD student base will utilize its facilities.
Heading into the fall, over 500 students are enrolled for the upcoming fall semester, the Central Texas Healthcare Academy’s first. King says just under 100 students are projected to graduate from the first cohort four years from now—a sign of the natural ebbs and flows for young students finding their place in the world.
Not all pathways will be in clinical settings, either.
“We know there isn’t one pathway that is perfect for everyone,” King said. “We wanted to provide opportunities for high school students to explore options in health care and build strong ties to industry partners with real life experience.”
The Future of the Central Texas Healthcare Academy
You may be asking: Why Pflugerville ISD and Hays CISD?
King says each independent school district was uniquely positioned to jumpstart the academy.
“The main barrier to growing health care sciences is clinical spaces,” she said, noting the lack of them locally, statewide and nationally.
Both locations represent locations to funnel students, with each offering different hospital systems to advance students in clinical spaces.
As Travis County’s population continues to soar—the county has 1.4 million residents, which is fifth-most in Texas—the need for qualified health care workers will only elevate.
Central Health has stepped forward as a key partner.
“Central Health has been momentous in this,” King said. “That industry component, that’s what makes us different than traditional training programs. Industry is involved from the beginning. And they are instrumental in building pathways that are valuable to students.”