HCA Florida Healthcare congratulates, supports Florida's Teacher of the Year
Statewide healthcare network partners with state educators to help close gap in healthcare workforce.
Orlando, FL – HCA Florida Healthcare leaders today congratulated Florida’s 2025 Teacher of the Year, Jaime Suarez, and pledged ongoing support to student healthcare career programs across Florida aimed at addressing the state’s healthcare worker shortage.
Suarez, who teaches mathematics in Hernando County, received the honor at the Florida Department of Education’s 2025 Teacher of Year gala in Orlando last week. The mission of the Teacher of the Year program is to honor and recognize excellence in teaching, support continued learning for all educators and highlight the importance and impact of the profession. Selecting a Teacher of the Year celebrates the thousands of outstanding professional educators in Florida schools.
Strengthening Florida’s healthcare workforce
National shortages of up to 3.2 million workers in the healthcare industry are expected to persist in the coming years. The Florida Chamber Foundation’s Workforce Needs Study estimates a shortage of approximately 463,000 healthcare workers by the end of 2024 while the Florida Hospital Association anticipates a shortage of nearly 60,000 nurses alone over the next decade. Left unaddressed, this deficit could impact care teams and the communities they serve.
To help fill this gap, HCA Florida Healthcare, one of the state’s leading health systems, is making significant investments in training the next generation of healthcare workers. Through partnerships with statewide organizations, HCA Florida Healthcare contributes to programs that help create career pathways for high school and college students, increase talent diversity and improve student retention and advancement.
Most recently, HCA Florida Healthcare, which includes over 650 affiliated sites of care and employs nearly 80,000 Floridians, supported the Florida Department of Education’s and the Florida Teacher Lead Network’s 2025 Teacher of the Year program.
“HCA Florida Healthcare provides a wide range of healthcare career exploration and training programs to give teens first-hand experiences to help them prepare for their futures,” said Denise Kendust, assistant vice president of community engagement for HCA Healthcare’s North Florida Division. “Our partnership with the Florida’s Teacher of the Year program is a great opportunity to align our shared goals of strengthening college and career pathways for students throughout Florida.”
Inspiring the future through strategic partnerships
Additional efforts to advance the healthcare profession include the recent announcement of the partnership with HCA Healthcare’s Healthier Tomorrow Fund and the Consortium of Florida Education Foundations. A grant of $1 million over the next three years will support the Consortium’s Career Pathways to a Healthier Florida program to help create and expand healthcare career pathways for underserved high school students. The program will fund 15 local education foundations over the next three years, focusing on activities that lead to nursing or allied health tracks and include work-based learning, healthcare career exploration activities and industry certifications.
As students graduate high school and continue their education, HCA Healthcare’s partnerships with Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Hispanic-Serving Institutions aim to help diversify the workforce and to help hospitals reflect the communities they serve. In Florida, these partnerships include Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU) and Florida International University (FIU), with each receiving $1.5 million for student programming. The partnership with FAMU supports students in the Master of Health Administration program with both internships and scholarships, while the contribution to FIU supports the Nicole Wertheim College of Nursing & Health Sciences to expand its faculty and offer scholarships to increase enrollment and address the national nursing shortage.
“Our goal is to empower the communities where we live, work and provide care to build a future-ready workforce,” said HCA Healthcare North Florida Division Chief Nursing Executive Dawn Beljin. “Through our strategic partnerships with education institutions across the state – and through individual program opportunities like experiential learning, job shadowing and interactive simulation labs – we are providing real-world experiences to help students realize their potential.”
Get more information about HCA Florida Healthcare’s impact on students and communities.