Lisa Hadden accepts position with mid-Michigan Area Health Education


The former president of the Mount Pleasant Area Chamber of Commerce will soon be working with mid-Michigan Area Health Education.

Lisa Hadden, who announced her resignation from her position as president July 12, will “create the mid-Michigan Area Health Education Center at Central Michigan University,” CMU said in a press release Monday.

Hadden said she is excited that the position combines her years of experience in community development and her years spent in health professions education.

“The reason I was attracted to it was that it combines heath care administration and health professions with community development,” she said. “I’m excited to work with the College of Medicine and also the Health Professions.”

Hadden will serve as executive director, making her a CMU employee working on behalf of CMED.

According to the release, she will “provide programming and administrative leadership to the mid-Michigan AHEC and its staff,” as well as “develop and coordinate programs with a variety of academic and community partners.”

Hadden starts work August 20 with an annual salary of $80,000.

“CMU is committed to promoting the health and well-being of people in underserved rural and urban areas,” said CMED dean Ernest Yoder in the release. “Establishing an AHEC program here in mid-Michigan allows us to further our effort to promote health professions.”

The AHEC program, created in 2010 by a federal grant, is designed to recruit and train a health care work force in Michigan. Hadden said CMU’s program will work with 19 different counties, including Mount Pleasant, Saginaw, Midland and Bay City.

Hadden said the whole point is to create these programs regionally and see what assets are available to support people getting into the health professions.

The program has “grow-your-own-profession” mindset, Hadden said. The bare statistics of Michigan’s primary care workers, she said, show the need for this new development.

“Michigan has a shortage of primary care physicians and nurses,” she said. “This is a way at looking at our region and say, ‘How can we get people to go into these services and keep them in Michigan?’”

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