WASHINGTON – Community health center advocates and policy experts are applauding an announcement by the U.S. Health and Human Services Department to use $33 million in stimulus funds to train health professionals.

For health reform to be meaningful, access and coverage must be accompanied by support for the workforce profession, said Feygele Jacobs, executive vice president of RCHN Community Health Foundation.

“Workforce development must be appropriately distributed, funded and scoped,” she said.

The extent to which HHS can provide funding to help train health professionals “is essential” for addressing the increased demand for physicians, nurses and other practitioners, Jacobs said.

The designated funds place new value on a healthcare workforce focused on primary care and prevention, said Peter Shin, associate research professor of health policy at George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services. “The aim is not just putting bodies out there,” he noted.

Shin and his colleagues recently released a study, funded through the Geiger Gibson/RCHN Community Health Foundation Research Collaborative, which anticipated a savings of $212 billion from 2010 to 2019 by expanding health centers to reach 20 million more patients over 10 years.

The Bush administration cut funding to community health centers. Although not fatal, the cuts led to capacity reductions and made it difficult to recruit and retain local healthcare professionals in medically underserved areas. The restoration of funds would reverse that trend, Shin predicted.

Surprisingly, 70 percent of people in medically underserved areas had health insurance, according to an August 2008 report issued by the National Association of Community Health Centers, Robert Graham Center and the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services.

According to Shin, the problem faced by people in these areas was lack of access to a medical home.

Shin also acknowledged that changes in payment must be addressed on the broader platform of healthcare reform. “There’s a mal-distribution problem,” he said. “We need to distribute resources to the community.”

President Obama recognizes the need to support prevention and primary care in underserved communities, Shin said. Some of the administration’s reform proposals target restoring, rebuilding and expanding the safety net.

The healthcare reform plan released last week by Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus (D - Mont.) recognizes the need to address provider shortages in needy communities and the inappropriate reimbursement structure.

Shin said this suggests that policymakers understand that enacting insurance reform without increasing primary care capacity for improving the prevention and management of chronic conditions will do little to stem long run costs.