Centennial Area Health Education Center has been working behind the scenes to support and build the health care workforce in northeastern Colorado since the 1970s.
Yet, to many, the institution remains unknown. To remind or familiarize the community, Executive Director Melissa Jensen wants to shine a light on “AHEC” of a mission to improve health outcomes in the center’s 12-county coverage area, benefiting more than 750,000 people.
Executive Director Melissa Jensen of the Centennial Area Health Education Center, talks during a dementia training seminar held at the LINC on Friday April 25, 2025.(Jim Rydbom/Staff Photographer)Centennial Area Health Education Center, or CAHEC, hosted a “AHEC of a Party” Friday at the LINC Library, 501 8th Ave., in downtown Greeley. The event welcomed the public and community partners to get a hands-on look at the institutions’ long-standing work to connect “existing and future health care professionals and communities to resources and education.”
The U.S. Congress established National Area Health Education Centers programs in 1971 to support the health care workforce and address shortages. Today, the network has 300 offices, serving 85% of the nation’s counties, according to Jensen.
The Centennial office, which is based in Greeley, covers “a lot of ground” in the upper right corner of the state, supporting the communities east of Jackson County and north of Cheyenne County.
The founding mission still plays an important role in what Centennial’s small but devoted staff of five and a half people hone in on: inspiring young students to pursue a health care career, supporting college students in their studies and career paths and continuing educational opportunities for established health care professionals.
Jump-starting careers
The National Center for Health Workforce Analysis projects staffing shortages in nearly all physician specialties in 2037, including an overall shortage of 187,130 physicians. Non-metro areas will experience a 60% shortage of physicians, while metro areas anticipate closer to a 10% shortage.
Projections show nursing, women’s health, primary care, oral health, behavioral health and allied health will experience shortages in 2037 as well.
Centennial Area Health Education Center wants to help meet the increasing demand for medical field workers by offering high school pathway programs.
The organization has a seven-month program called H.O.P.E, where students across the state can join in-person or online once per month to take part in interactive lessons or learn from guest speakers. About 50 students throughout the region currently participate in this program, Jensen said.
Another part of the pathway’s work, “Anatomy in Clay” offers four classes of hands-on learning to explore human anatomy for “visual, audio and tactile learners.” Students use models and clay to explore the brain, heart, waste systems and support systems — a method that was on display at Friday’s event.
Centennial Area Health Education Center also has a campaign directed at high school and early college students that helps them explore their options in the medical workforce. “You are the Cure” highlights sectors from nursing and pharmacy work to mental and behavioral health jobs.
“We don’t want to just expose kids to being a doctor or nurse,” Jensen said. “Of course, we need them, but there are so many careers that kids aren’t even aware of.”
Supporting medical students, professionals
Two behind-the-scenes offerings from the Centennial Area Health Education Center that are available to college-level students pursuing health care careers include AHEC Scholars and host homes.
AHEC Scholars, a free one- or two-year program, educates college students with a nationwide curriculum that explores additional knowledge and experience of working in the medical field. Topics include health equity, the opioid epidemic, interprofessional education and more.
Centennial Area Health Education Center also connects medical students who do clinical rotations in regional rural areas with “host homes” to avoid commuting and learn about rural living, according to Jensen.
“Hopefully, some of them will like it enough to go out and practice there, because we really need people out in those rural areas,” she added.
As of September 2024, rural areas made up 66.33% of Primary Care Health Professional Shortage Areas, according to the Rural Health Information Hub.
Centennial Area Health Education Center also prioritizes continuing to listen to the needs of local health care workers out in the field and the community.
“What we really do is we try to prevent provider burnout, improve health care quality and then combat health disparities,” Jensen said.
Within the past few years, the center has responded to two urgent gaps in the community: the need for dementia training and harm reduction education.
In 2030, the baby boomer population will exceed 65 years, accounting for 1 out of 5 Americans, according to the National Center for Health Workforce Analysis.
As the aging population has boomed, Jensen began to hear more clinical and educational partners wanting to equip staff, students and family caregivers with more skills and techniques to improve health outcomes and reduce stress for both the patient and provider. That’s where Wendy Abbott, a compassionate care training specialist for the Centennial center, came in.
More than 90,800 Coloradans are estimated to be living with Alzheimer’s disease, yet health professionals only receive limited training, Abbott’s training flyer said.
Abbott developed a compassionate care dementia training designed for health care students and professionals or providers who care for people living with Alzheimer’s. Her interactive curriculum incorporates evidence-based programs including a virtual dementia tour and the SPECAL method — which began as an acronym for “Specialized Early Care for Alzheimer’s.”
At “AHEC of a Party,” attendees could step into a simulation that mimics what it feels like to live with dementia.
“It’s a great empathy builder,” Abbott said. “You were in there for a few minutes. People with dementia are feeling like that day in and day out.”
After the immersive lived experience with participants at businesses and schools, Abbott has a debrief to determine ways to better care for dementia patients. Participants can then learn the second part of the curriculum, the SPECAL method, which is a person-centered, relationship-based approach that promotes the well-being of those living with dementia and their care partners.
Abbott said the effective tool approach “demystifies dementia” and helps eliminate caretaker burnout.
“You want to make it easy for everyone, families and professionals, because it doesn’t have to be as hard as people paint it to be … a doom and gloom,” she said. “People can live really well, as long as we learn how to help them live really well.”
Erika Greenberg, Centennial Area Health Education Center’s health educator and regional health connector, turned her focus to the opioid crisis about four years ago when the community’s need spiked.
Greenberg goes into K-12 schools, colleges and universities to educate young people on accidental overdoses, the dangers of fentanyl in counterfeit pills and street drugs, how to administer Narcan and more.
“Our job really is not treatment,” Greenberg said. “We’re out there to educate.”
Although the Centennial Area Health Education Center’s team drives outreach and education efforts, the organization has always leaned on collaboration with community partners, who are working toward similar goals.
However, according to Jensen, even their partners don’t know “the breadth and depth” of the center’s mission and work.
Community support needed more than ever
The event Friday reminded all attendees, from residents to community leaders, that now is a good time to learn about and support the Centennial Area Health Education Center.
During a time of uncertainty with federal funding cuts, Jensen has had to put on a fundraising cap for the first time in the Greeley-based location’s history.
An exhibit held inside the LINC library, shows the ways to treat addition issues during the Centennial Area Health Education Center’s display on Friday April 26, 2025.(Jim Rydbom/Staff Photographer)“We have never, ever done traditional fundraising,” she said. “It’s time for us to step up and start.”
Centennial Area Health Education Center received federal funding at the base level, and although not totally dependent on it, the risk of cuts causes concern about what will happen to the center’s work.
“It might not be life or death, but it’s definitely life-enhancing,” Jensen said about the work.
Jensen probably won’t know until the end of the calendar year whether or not they will receive funding cuts at the federal level. In the meantime, her team has launched campaigns to support programming for people to “invest” in the projects that matter to them.
For more information on the center or to invest in its mission, go to cahec.org.
“We’re really about collaboration,” Jensen said. “We don’t want to operate in silos. I think we’re just way more impactful when we do things together.”
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