Shelli-Ann McKenzie is revolutionizing support for healthcare professionals through her nonprofit organization, Help for Healthcare Professionals (HHCP). With over 23 years of experience in both clinical practice and computer systems design, McKenzie has leveraged her nursing informatics expertise to develop programs that address critical needs in the healthcare ecosystem. Founded during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, HHCP has already assisted over 23,000 healthcare workers across 20 Georgia counties. As the organization celebrates its fifth anniversary, McKenzie shares insights about their upcoming charity gala and how it will further their mission of building the healthcare pipeline through education, crisis relief, and advocacy.
Tell us about the Night of Glam and Gratitude Charity Awards Gala and how it started.
It started when I established Help for Healthcare Professionals. I’m a registered nurse by trade, but during COVID, I just felt the need to have to do something. So I was moved to start Help for Healthcare Professionals to provide support to my colleagues, who were literally dying on the front lines. We started with our crisis relief pillar. So think meals, hardship funding, mental wellness support, and so on, and then we have two other pillars, our education programming, and then we have our advocacy work. So under education, we provide scholarships, internship opportunities. We still go out and do community health education, health and digital literacy, education workshops about healthcare careers, and so on, and then we do a lot of advocacy work supporting all the health professionals in whatever bills they’re trying to get past. Why? To increase access to healthcare for Georgians and then help out the healthcare workforce. So we started that back in COVID. So that’s the driver, and out of that was birthed our Night of Glam and Gratitude Charity Awards Gala, and it’s just to celebrate and recognize healthcare workers doing some exceptional work.
How does the gala help fund scholarships and mentorship programs?
Since we started, we’ve helped over 23,000 healthcare workers and first responders in around 20 counties in Georgia. However, we’re poised to grow and scale some of our programs that we have. So again, we’ve provided scholarships historically to some high schoolers, but now we know that there’s a bigger need in the undergraduate spaces. So there might be people in college who are struggling right now to meet their financial requirements to get through their programs. So we want to be able to provide more scholarships like that and then be able to fund our Youth Med mentorship program and keep that 100% free.
Our Youth Med program is for youth, ages 13 to 20 who want to join the healthcare workforce. So we have our physician pathway, and we have nursing and Allied health, and this year we’re launching our Health Tech Academy. I did nursing administration, I’m a formally trained registered nurse, but I’m also an informaticist, I design systems and softwares. So really excited about our Health Tech Academy that we’re launching. So yes, to answer your question, we provide scholarships to aspiring healthcare professionals. The goal is to fund our youth and some of our education programs. So that’s really what the gala allows us to do.
Why is community and business support crucial for this initiative?
When we started a nonprofit, the goal is to mobilize people and community to support the healthcare workforce. So that when you need somebody to take care of you, somebody else needs somebody. You have the right people at the bedside who are trained and qualified. So you strengthen the healthcare ecosystem. The members of the healthcare workforce. Then you’re going to ultimately strengthen your communities as well.
We’re building the pipeline for healthcare’s future. All aspects of it, career, workforce, all of that. So we’re building that pipeline, and it’s going to take all of us. So you might not know what to do, but you can. You could sponsor somebody in the mentorship program, you could say, “Okay, well, I’ll drop money into scholarships bucket.” We’re healthcare professionals that understand what it takes, and we know what the landscape looks like, and we know how to help bring people through that. Because one of the things that we do is we make sure we’re capturing all the data we’re going to follow them over time as they come through our programs, and we look at what percentage stay in healthcare, what percentage left, and things like that. So everybody could get involved.
Can you share some success metrics from your programs so far?
On April first we’ll be 5 years old. So we’re celebrating our 5 year anniversary. As we build out more programs, we get more metrics. So let’s start with our Youth Med mentorship program. We launched it in partnership with Northeast Georgia Health last year, and we graduated 22 students out of that program.
It was built out originally as a 5 week summer intensive for youth, ages 13 to 20. In that 5 week time span our 22 students collectively, so altogether, they did 938 hours in 16 specialty areas. So specialty areas are cardiology, that’s your heart, neurology, that’s brain, they were in brain surgery with a neurosurgeon. So they did different specialty areas. So about 16 of those, and then we had a number of mentors involved, like 40 something mentors from Northeast Georgia that participated in the program.
We had a formal graduation with about 100 people, they were able to invite their parents and their families. We even had a white coat ceremony. For those of you who don’t work in healthcare, when you graduate from Med school, you do the white coat ceremony, nurses do a pinning ceremony. So we did a white coat ceremony. One of our physician champions is at Northeast Georgia, and then I happen to be a nurse. So it’s a physician-nurse collab. So we did the white coat ceremony, and we pinned their name, badge, and everything on them. So we kind of combined a white coat and the nursing PIN.
But those are some of the metrics, and then one student, she was a pre-nursing major, and she goes to Spelman, and after coming through our program. She has since switched to pre-med. More stories like that to come.
How can people support the gala?
In terms of the organizations that come to the event, we have representation from the Governor’s office to the Chief of fire for emergency services. We have attorneys in the room. We have realtors in the room, so we mix it. It’s a cross industry room. So it’s a great room to come and network in. Of course, we have our healthcare professionals and those types of partners, but there’s still, I think this is like the last week to get sponsorships in. So you could go to our website, www.helpforhealthcareprofessionals.org. And on social platforms. It’s at Help for Healthcare Professionals, and we have all the information in our link tree as well as on our website, for you to be able to donate and sponsor to this worthy cause.
The Night of Glam and Gratitude Charity Awards Gala will be held on Saturday, April 5, 2025, at the Atlanta Marriott Northeast in the Emory area.
