Aims Community College has received an award from The Colorado Trust for the foundation's Health Professions Initiative.

Aims was one of 22 institutions statewide to receive a three-year grant to address Colorado's shortage of health care professionals.

Aims used the funding to enhance or develop health care certificates including phlebotomy, gerontology, nurse aide and emergency technician.

"We met with the health care professionals in the region to understand what program we needed to start or improve to meet the need of the health care industry and to get more people into health care professions," Chris Urso, Aims grant coordinator, said in a prepared statement. "Over the three-year period, we saw student enrollment increase 70 to 75 percent in all of these programs."

By spring 2007, the program included a scholarship that paid for students' tuition and fees, plus an additional $250 to help pay for books, scrubs, background checks and state testing for students who otherwise would not qualify for funding support.