Offering Health Workers a Hand

Ferdinand Rojo, 36, was once chief resident of anesthesiology at a hospital in the Philippines. Since immigrating to the United States in 1990, however, he has been able to work only as an electrocardiogram technician.

Fighting tears, Rojo explained to a gathering of academics and health workers this week his struggle to become a doctor in this country. In 1999, he applied for 150 medical residency programs. Last year, defeated by a torrent of rejection letters, he sent out only 20 applications.

Now Rojo is hoping that a Walnut-based center for immigrant health workers, which officially opened this week, can help.

At a news conference Thursday at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in Willowbrook, four Southland colleges unveiled a network of assistance centers on their campuses, each designed to train workers from other countries for jobs in the U.S. health-care system.

The program is intended to increase diversity in the industry as well as provide jobs for which immigrants have skills.

The Welcome Back: International Health Worker Assistance Center is based at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut but has satellite offices at Drew, Cal State Long Beach and Los Angeles City College.

Center counselors will help immigrant health workers obtain the appropriate licensing, credentials and training they need to re-enter their old profession or learn a new one in a related field.

“We are committed to helping the immigrant population ... better themselves educationally,” said Dr. Jackie Ireland, vice president of academic affairs at Los Angeles City College. The project is run by the colleges but funded by a $1.4-million grant from the California Endowment, the state’s largest health-care foundation. In addition to the Walnut site, there is a Welcome Back Center in San Francisco, and others are planned in Fresno and San Diego.

At the centers, counselors assess foreign health-care graduates’ backgrounds and recommend courses and programs that offer the training they need.

“Many international graduates are working menial jobs,” said Dr. Rosevelt Jacobs, interim dean at Drew’s College of Allied Health. “Even though they are trained in health care, they are unable to practice.” Rojo, who recently began working with counselors at the Welcome Back center at Mount SAC, said he now has hope of getting into medical school.

“They’ve been very receptive, warm and encouraging,” he said. “Just doing it on my own is near to impossible.”