As the United States becomes more diverse, one of the challenges facing the health sector is the lack of culturally and linguistically diverse healthcare workers. This is especially true for the 'safety net' community-based and public health clinics and health service agencies who are oftentimes the sole providers of health services for immigrant communities. Due to the lack of culturally and linguistically diverse healthcare workers, individuals with limited English skills are frequently unable to receive and/or understand care that meets their unique needs. It is well-known that important aspects of care, such as treatment adherence and patient satisfaction, improve significantly when the cultural and linguistic gap is narrowed between the health services providers and their patients and clients.

The mission of Project Bridge is to address the healthcare workforce crisis in the region by attracting, supporting, training and providing healthcare workforce opportunities to foreign, internationally trained healthcare workers who are currently underemployed or unemployed in the medical field due to their healthcare worker credentials not being accredited in the U.S. healthcare system.

Our goals are to:

• Help eliminate the shortage of healthcare workers in the region to ensure that there is a healthcare worker available to serve people of all income levels across the region that have healthcare needs.
• Empower the region's immigrant communities by providing assistance to the internationally trained healthcare workers in receiving credit for their healthcare degree earned abroad within the U.S. system.
• Create a Midwest hub in Omaha for internationally trained healthcare workers, thus increasing the ethnic and economic diversity to the city by attracting highly competent, qualified and diverse individuals from around the world.

Project Bridge is proud to assist internationally trained healthcare workers with the support and services needed to complete their U.S. licensure and begin working in the healthcare field. Through the provision of these services, Project Bridge will improve patient care outcomes of the underserved and underrepresented patient population in the region by decreasing the disparities between the ethnic makeup of the patient population and that of the healthcare workforce.