On April 18, Stockton city mayor Kevin Lincoln bestowed the prestigious Key to the City accolade upon San Joaquin Delta College’s current Dean of Health and Fitness, Lisa Luchessi, and former dean, Julie Kay.
The award is earned in recognition of Delta’s success with the HOPE Program, which has made a significant impact on the nursing program and transformed it into a thriving hub of healthcare education.
“Next thing I know, they’re calling Julie and I, that we’re getting the Key to the City. I wouldn’t be truthful unless I said it was kind of out of left field to me. It is an honor to represent our program,” Luchessi said.
The HOPE Program was developed by Anitra Williams, an adjunct instructor at Delta College, Kay, and Luchessi, to support community hospitals and care providers in meeting their staffing needs.
The program is meant to support the constant need for nursing staff in the region’s medical field, specifically by retaining new hospital staff.
The program has an 89 percent retention rate and the ever-growing graduations, reaching 150 students per cohort.
In a breakdown of the nursing field, Luchessi explained that in the Central Valley, there is an influx of nurses who are not from the area enlisting in campus health care programs.
Upon completing their degree at Delta College, graduates work for the local healthcare facilities and, after attaining experience, leave the county for different areas of the state.
Facing a constant pattern of nurses entering and leaving communities, the process of onboarding an employee in the nursing field and not retaining them as employees became expensive for hospitals.
Aiming to support the retention rate, the HOPE program was designed in two branches.
One is a high school program that serves as a pathway for Health Career Academy students to get into the nursing program and undergo a fast-track evaluation.
The second was the incumbent worker program. That’s the program in which employees who have taken all of the prerequisites and met all their requirements on the program can be admitted into a cohort of students within the hospitals where they work.
The hospitals included as part of the partnership were San Joaquin General, Saint Joseph, Lodi Memorial Hospital, and Community Medical Center.
Luchessi further articulated that the sponsoring facilities allow workers within the program to start in positions that pay higher wages than the usual rates.
“It’s a true partnership between industry hospitals, healthcare facilities, and education sites. It’s an innovative program. We’ve been admitting students since 2020, and it gained recognition because of its ability to support our community. I help represent the diverse nature of our community as well. Additionally, it’s being recognized by the chancellor’s office as a model curriculum for other nursing programs in the state,” Luchessi said.