California Reproductive Health Service Corps.

Existing law establishes a variety of health care workforce training programs and health professions education programs within the Department of Health Care Access and Information to, among other things, maximize the delivery of primary care and family physician services to specific areas of California where there is a recognized unmet priority need for those services and ensure an adequate supply of appropriately trained professional and vocational nurses. Existing law establishes the Health Professions Education Fund to support those programs by providing scholarships and loans to students from underrepresented groups who are accepted to or enrolled in schools of medicine, dentistry, nursing, or other health professions. This bill would establish the California Reproductive Health Service Corps within the department for the purposes of recruiting, training, and retaining a diverse workforce of reproductive health care professionals who will be part of reproductive health care teams to work in underserved areas. The bill would require the corps to administer and oversee scholarships and stipends for scholars who are new reproductive health students, and loan repayment for scholars who have acquired debt from attending a reproductive health professional school in the past, in exchange for a 3-year term of obligated service in California at a corps-approved site. The bill would require the corps to prioritize the selection of scholars from historically excluded populations and underserved areas, and would require scholars to agree to complete abortion training as part of their health care education and to provide, or participate on a team that provides, reproductive health services and to commit to working at a corps-approved site in a specified area with a specified population. This bill would require the department to conduct an evaluation 5 years after implementation to assess the impact and effectiveness of the corps, and would require the department to report its findings to the Legislature on or before January 1, 2029.