HCA Healthcare announces HCA Healthcare Foundation’s $1 million grant to enhance work with Educate Texas

Today, we are proud to announce that the HCA Healthcare Foundation, through its Healthier Tomorrow Fund, will enhance its work with Educate Texas, an initiative of Communities Foundation of Texas, through a new $1 million grant.

This donation builds upon the collaboration resulting from the Foundation’s $1.35 million grant to the organization in 2022 and will continue to focus on increasing student access to programs that enable healthcare careers, including high schools in Texas that offer Pathways in Technology Early College High School (P-TECH) healthcare career tracks. Through this first grant, Educate Texas supported the expansion of healthcare career pathways across P-TECH campuses – from 20 to 104 schools – enrolling nearly 10,000 high school students in programs designed to prepare them for in-demand healthcare careers.

The P-TECH school model, led by the Texas Education Agency with technical assistance provided by Educate Texas, creates relationships with high schools, institutions of higher learning and industry partners to provide a meaningful pathway for students in grades 9-12 to earn both a high school diploma and a no-cost, two-year post-secondary degree or industry-based credentials by the time they graduate high school. P-TECH is an open-enrollment high school program that creates workforce pathways aligned with high-demand, high-wage fields throughout the state, including healthcare careers.

Building on the success of the past three years, this new grant will support Educate Texas in providing schools with the resources needed to expand program implementation quality, deepen industry partnerships and create stronger career pathways support for students pursuing healthcare professions. This initiative will focus on growing the number of students earning healthcare degrees and credentials and increasing the number of hospital employers, including HCA Healthcare-affiliated hospitals, engaged in meaningful partnerships with school districts across North Texas, Austin, San Antonio and the Houston Gulf Coast region.

“This continued investment from the HCA Healthcare Foundation is helping us connect more Texas students to careers with purpose,” said Kerri Briggs, Ph.D., executive director of Educate Texas. “Expanding healthcare pathways in P-TECH schools gives young people the opportunity to graduate with more than a diploma, equipped with the skills, credentials and confidence to enter high-demand fields and strengthen their communities.”

The HCA Healthcare Foundation’s Healthier Tomorrow Fund is a community impact fund that addresses high-priority community needs where HCA Healthcare has a presence. Since its inception, the fund has given more than $21 million in grants to nonprofits across the country.

HCA Healthcare and the HCA Healthcare Foundation have a strong history of strengthening the healthcare workforce through initiatives that help provide students opportunities to create fulfilling careers in healthcare. In 2024, the Foundation committed $1 million to the Consortium of Florida Education Foundations to help fund its Career Pathways to a Healthier Florida program, which aims to help create and expand healthcare career pathways for underserved high school students across the state of Florida. In 2023, the Foundation gave $250,000 to community colleges and universities and $130,000 to the Urban League of Broward County to help provide high school students early access to careers in healthcare and to connect unemployed and underemployed jobseekers with meaningful healthcare career opportunities. HCA Healthcare has also committed $10 million to 11 partnerships with colleges and universities with the goal of creating opportunities for future healthcare leaders to learn and serve in their communities.