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NILES — A new course designed to give students an overview of the ever-evolving healthcare system will soon be available to local students.

The Niles Community Schools Board of Education unanimously approved a new Career and Technical Education Class – Intro To Healthcare – during Monday’s Board of Education meeting at the NCS Administration Building, 1 Tyler St., Niles.

A full-year course that will be offered to students in grades 9 to 12 starting in the 2023-24 academic year, Intro To Healthcare will introduce students to a variety of allied healthcare careers and would align with the Perkins Course Competencies, a specified group of competencies aligned with the state CTE program standards that take approximately 80 hours of instruction to deliver. Students will cover and review essential foundations of knowledge and skills within health science fields, including:

• Health science careers
• Post-secondary education pathways
• Human body systems and medical terminology
• Professionalism and employability skills

According to a presentation by Brooke Brawley – the district’s Director of Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment – the course will add another elective offering for students at the high school. With the school’s current Allied Health course shifting focus to Patient Care Technician certification, introduction to health careers needed a course of its own. The district believes the course will serve as a great recruitment tool for its two additional health science programs. Even if students have no interest in health science, after taking this course, the district believes they will learn valuable information when it comes to their own health and experience with medical professionals so that they can always advocate for themselves and their loved ones.

Superintendent Dan Applegate said this class is part of the district’s efforts to expand CTE offerings to students.

“One of the things we do is we connect with local businesses – Allied Health, (Corewell), LMC and coordinate all of our efforts to where they start in high school and they move to LMC to get certification and then jobs that are here in the local area. That’s really is the goal,” Applegate said. “I believe we need to continue to stay connected to local businesses and continue to grow our CTE programs.”