HCA Healthcare Announces HCA Healthcare Foundation’s $1 Million Grant to Enhance Work With Educate Texas

HCA Healthcare, Inc. (NYSE: HCA), one of the nation’s leading healthcare providers, today announced that the HCA Healthcare Foundation, through its Healthier Tomorrow Fund, will enhance its work with Educate Texas, an initiative of Communities Foundation of Texas, through a new $1 million grant.

This donation builds upon the collaboration resulting from the Foundation’s $1.35 million grant to the organization in 2022 and will continue to focus on increasing student access to programs that enable healthcare careers, including high schools in Texas that offer Pathways in Technology Early College High School (P-TECH) healthcare career tracks. Through this first grant, Educate Texas supported the expansion of healthcare career pathways across P-TECH campuses - from 20 to 104 schools - enrolling nearly 10,000 high school students in programs designed to prepare them for in-demand healthcare careers.

“We are thrilled to enhance our work with Educate Texas to help empower students with access to the resources, guidance and opportunities to pursue meaningful careers in healthcare,” said Joanne Pulles, vice president of community engagement at HCA Healthcare and president of the HCA Healthcare Foundation. “This ongoing support reflects our commitment to helping develop the healthcare leaders of tomorrow.”

The P-TECH school model, led by the Texas Education Agency with technical assistance provided by Educate Texas, creates relationships with high schools, institutions of higher learning and industry partners to provide a meaningful pathway for students in grades 9-12 to earn both a high school diploma and a no-cost, two-year post-secondary degree or industry-based credentials by the time they graduate high school. P-TECH is an open-enrollment high school program that creates workforce pathways aligned with high-demand, high-wage fields throughout the state, including healthcare careers.

Building on the success of the past three years, this new grant will support Educate Texas in providing schools with the resources needed to expand program implementation quality, deepen industry partnerships and create stronger career pathways support for students pursuing healthcare professions. This initiative will focus on growing the number of students earning healthcare degrees and credentials and increasing the number of hospital employers, including HCA Healthcare-affiliated hospitals, engaged in meaningful partnerships with school districts across North Texas, Austin, San Antonio and the Houston Gulf Coast region.

“This continued investment from the HCA Healthcare Foundation is helping us connect more Texas students to careers with purpose,” said Kerri Briggs, Ph.D., executive director of Educate Texas. “Expanding healthcare pathways in P-TECH schools gives young people the opportunity to graduate with more than a diploma, equipped with the skills, credentials and confidence to enter high-demand fields and strengthen their communities.”

The HCA Healthcare Foundation's Healthier Tomorrow Fund is a community impact fund that addresses high-priority community needs where HCA Healthcare has a presence. Since its inception, the fund has given more than $21 million in grants to nonprofits across the country.

HCA Healthcare and the HCA Healthcare Foundation have a strong history of strengthening the healthcare workforce through initiatives that help provide students opportunities to create fulfilling careers in healthcare. In 2024, the Foundation committed $1 million to the Consortium of Florida Education Foundations to help fund its Career Pathways to a Healthier Florida program, which aims to help create and expand healthcare career pathways for underserved high school students across the state of Florida. In 2023, the Foundation gave $250,000 to community colleges and universities and $130,000 to the Urban League of Broward County to help provide high school students early access to careers in healthcare and to connect unemployed and underemployed jobseekers with meaningful healthcare career opportunities. HCA Healthcare has also committed $10 million to 11 partnerships with colleges and universities with the goal of creating opportunities for future healthcare leaders to learn and serve in their communities.

About HCA Healthcare Foundation

The mission of the HCA Healthcare Foundation is to promote health and well-being and strive to make a positive impact in all the communities HCA Healthcare serves. We accomplish this mission by providing leadership, service and financial support to effective non-profit organizations working individually and collectively.

About HCA Healthcare

Nashville-based HCA Healthcare is one of the nation’s leading providers of healthcare services comprising 192 hospitals and approximately 2,500 ambulatory sites of care, including surgery centers, freestanding ERs, urgent care centers, and physician clinics, in 20 states and the United Kingdom. With its founding in 1968, HCA Healthcare created a new model for hospital care in the United States, using combined resources to strengthen hospitals, deliver patient-focused care and improve the practice of medicine. HCA Healthcare has conducted a number of clinical studies, including one that demonstrated that full-term delivery is healthier than early elective delivery of babies and another that identified a clinical protocol that can reduce bloodstream infections in ICU patients by 44%. HCA Healthcare is a learning health system that uses its approximately 44 million annual patient encounters to advance science, improve patient care and save lives.

About Educate Texas

Educate Texas, an initiative of Communities Foundation of Texas, exists to help solve the biggest challenges facing public education. Its vision is for all Texans to have the education they need to earn a sustainable living wage, find a purposeful career, and realize aspirations for themselves, their families, and their communities.

The dynamic education team works collaboratively with partners through programs and policies to ensure every Texas student is prepared in school, the workforce, and beyond. Since 2003, Educate Texas has partnered with school districts, institutions of higher education, businesses, community and civic organizations, state agencies, and policymakers to strengthen the public and higher education systems for all Texas students.

All references to “Company,” “HCA” and “HCA Healthcare” as used throughout this document refer to HCA Healthcare, Inc. and its affiliates.

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