Esperanza Gomez, who practiced medicine in Colombia for 17 years before coming to the United States four years ago, wants to resume her career and is being helped by the Welcome Back Center at Dorcas Place.

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The Providence Journal / Bill Murphy

Esperanza Gomez, 50, is a physician, trained in Colombia, who spent 17 years at a children’s hospital in the Colombian city of Cali before coming to the United States four years ago. She would like to obtain her license to practice medicine in the United States, but the path for foreign-trained doctors is not easy, involving three lengthy exams, considerable expense, and a three-year residency program.

But now there is an organization designed to assist people such as Gomez. The Rhode Island Welcome Back Center, at Dorcas Place, 220 Elmwood Ave., was created to help immigrants trained in the health professions find appropriate work in this country. It officially opens tomorrow and Manuela Raposo, director of the center, said she’s already been contacted by 32 people, including Gomez, who want to make appointments.

“If you work in the community, you know there are hundreds of immigrant professionals,” Raposo said. “If you’re at a meeting, people will stand up and say I was a doctor, or I was a nurse, and I can’t get a job here.”

Modeled after a similar organization in San Francisco, the Rhode Island Welcome Back Center is designed for doctors, nurses, social workers and physical therapists. Raposo said she’s also heard from seven psychologists interested in the center. (She said she hasn’t quite figured out what to do about them, but she’s determined to think of something.) There is also a Welcome Back Center in Boston, which deals exclusively with nurses.

Raposo said the center will assess participants’ training and experience in both their country of origin and the United States, and develop career paths to achieve their goals. If English-language training is required, which it often is, special classes designed for health professionals are available from Dorcas Place. The Welcome Back Center will also help guide participants through state and federal licensing requirements, and help them study for the necessary exams.

Gomez, who works for Home and Hospice Care of Rhode Island and Progreso Latino, said she misses being a doctor, and is already scheduled to take one of the exams necessary to obtain her license to practice in Rhode Island.

The Welcome Back Center is financed by the Rhode Island Foundation, the Jessie B. Cox Charitable Trust, the Annie E. Casey Foundation/Making Connections Providence, United Way of Rhode Island and the Rhode Island Department of Education. Susan Closter-Godoy, grants manager for Dorcas Place, said the center is receiving $275,000 over a two-year period, with the possibility that more money may be coming. The center will start out with two full-time employees and three part-time employees.

“The philanthropy community is enthused about this project,” said Closter-Godoy. “It’s connecting community assets with community needs.”

Rhode Island economic development experts have identified health care as an area of job growth for the state. From 2002 to 2007, for example, the health care and social assistance portion of the economy has added more than 9,600 jobs — the largest increase of any private industry sector. Last year, health care and social assistance jobs accounted for 18.2 percent of the state’s private sector employment. Employment in health care and social assistance is projected to reach 86,000 by 2014, an increase of slightly more than 20 percent over the 2004 level.

In the meantime, the health sector is experiencing vacancies, and is particularly in need of nurses. Last December Michael J. Paruta, director of work force development at Women & Infants Hospital, estimated there were 600 vacancies in the state for nurses at any given time. The labor shortage has forced hospitals to recruit nurses from out of the state and even out of the country.

But there is an underutilized work force already here. At a June 2 meeting at the state Department of Health to discuss the opening of the Welcome Back Center, Johan Uvin, director of adult, career and technical education for the Rhode Island Department of Education, said that 2006 census data indicated that roughly 86,000 members of Rhode Island’s work force, which totaled 534,000, were foreign-born. Of that number, he said, slightly more than 36,000 had at least some college, 12,000 had a bachelor’s degree and 7,700 had at least a master’s degree.

While thousands already have good jobs, he said, a significant number are either unemployed or employed in low-skill occupations, often because of limited English skills. He said 24 percent with some college education, 29 percent of those with bachelor’s degrees and 3 percent of those with master’s degrees or higher cannot speak English well, or at all.

Anna Cano-Morales, representing the Rhode Island Foundation at the June 2 meeting, called them “invisible immigrants” who are not fulfilling their talent. “It’s sad, it’s inhumane, and it’s not very smart on our part,” she said, adding that, on a personal level, she has grown up with this all her life. “I know people who came here as architects or nurses who ended up working in factories.” Cano-Morales said the Rhode Island Foundation has high hopes for the Welcome Back Center. There are already national models in place, such as the San Francisco center, and the Rhode Island program has benchmarks to meet, she said.

Raposo said the Welcome Back Center’s goal is to serve 60 clients in the first year. Of that number, she said, half will receive English-language training. The other half, who are already proficient in English, will get help with career goals, timelines, information about the credentials they will need, and assistance in studying for their licensing exams.

Each participant will have a case manager. “These folks come in with a folder full of paper, diplomas and transcripts from their home countries. And the case manager will go through that and come up with a plan for what they need to do,” Raposo said.

Dr. David Gifford, director of the Rhode Island Department of Health, said the Welcome Back Center will not only help ease a labor shortage in the health-care field, but will also bring diversity to the work force, so that it better reflects the population of the state.

Members of the Latino community in the state had been talking about the number of professionally trained, but underemployed, people in their midst for some time. The Rhode Island Professional Latinos Association was founded in 2006 by Arelis Valerio, a pediatrician from Puerto Rico, to help immigrant professionals find work in the United States. Raposo is a member, and former president. “We talk a lot about how many immigrant professionals there are in the community,” Raposo said. Gomez is also a member, which is how she found out about the Welcome Back Center.

But the Welcome Back Center’s clientele will not be restricted to Latinos. Already, said Raposo, she has been contacted by potential clients from China, Kenya, and Haiti.

Brenda Dann-Messier, president of Dorcas Place, said the Welcome Back Center in Rhode Island got its start when the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which supports a neighborhood improvement program called Making Connections Providence, held a meeting in early February last year with community groups and government agencies to see if there was any interest in establishing a center. The Casey Foundation was aware of similar efforts in San Francisco and Boston, and brought staff from San Francisco to speak to Rhode Islanders.

In June, the Rhode Island Department of Education put out a formal request for proposals. Dorcas Place, an adult and family learning center, decided to apply.

Raposo said one of the advantages of the Welcome Back Center is that its clients are likely to stay in Rhode Island, noting that hospital human resource managers say the retention rate for nurses recruited internationally is only about 25 percent.

“Our participants already have roots and family here,” Raposo said. “We’re going to see a real return on this investment. These are not people who will come here and then leave.”

Daniel Lam, executive director of the Boston Welcome Back Center, said there are benefits that go beyond employment statistics. He said the Boston Welcome Back Center, which started in 2005, has helped 73 people become nurses in the United States as of May 30. “We truly believe we have touched the lives of 73 individuals, and their families as well,” he said. “Some of these people had been struggling to become a nurse for 10 years.”

For information about the Rhode Island Welcome Back Center, contact Raposo at (401) 273-8866, ext. 154 or by e-mail at mraposo@dorcasplace.org.

asmith@projo.com