AmeriCorps at RUSH: Impact and Policy Updates
Since its founding in 1993, AmeriCorps has been a cornerstone of national service in the United States, mobilizing individuals to strengthen communities while gaining valuable professional experience. Since 2019, CHaSCI has been proud to host 3-4 AmeriCorps Members per year—and although the Trump administration has cut large amounts of funding for AmeriCorps nationwide, we feel very lucky to be able to continue our AmeriCorps program for the 2025-2026 year.
As we are about to launch our 7th cohort in early September, let’s take a deeper dive into AmeriCorps! This post will outline the background and history of AmeriCorps, its overall purpose, what the program looks like at RUSH, and recent policy and funding challenges that our program has faced.
Photo source: OPB News
About AmeriCorps: Background and history
AmeriCorps is the federal agency for national service and volunteerism, helping communities across the country with service assignments ranging from mentoring students to disaster recovery to helping older adults age with dignity. Each year, AmeriCorps engages more than 200,000 individuals to serve organizations making a difference in communities across America. AmeriCorps focuses on six key areas: disaster services, economic opportunity, education, environmental stewardship, healthy futures, and veterans & military families.
AmeriCorps was founded in 1993 by President Bill Clinton through the National and Community Service Trust Act, which consolidated three earlier service programs under one umbrella:
VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) is an anti-poverty program designed to provide needed resources to nonprofit organizations and public agencies to increase their capacity to lift communities out of poverty. VISTA was founded in 1965 as a “domestic Peace Corps” to fight poverty through grassroots capacity building
NCCC (National Civilian Community Corps) is a team-based, residential service program for young adults focused on disaster response, infrastructure, and environmental stewardship. Teams live in the communities they serve to better understand the culture, participate in service-learning, and build leadership and life skills. NCCC was founded in 1992.
AmeriCorps State and National was created in 1993 to fund local nonprofits, schools, and public agencies to meet community needs through service.
In 2020, the federal agency managing these programs was rebranded from the Corporation for National and Community Service to AmeriCorps. This change was intended to improve clarity and recognition.
Since its inception in 1993, over 1.3 million members and millions of senior volunteers have served as AmeriCorps Members! More than 53,000 Illinois residents have served approximately 76 million hours and earned education awards totaling more than $193.2 million. AmeriCorps currently supports 200,000 members and volunteers across 40,000+ locations nationwide. In 2021, U.S. volunteers contributed 5 billion hours, saving nonprofits an estimated $159 billion in labor costs.
About AmeriCorps: What a year of service looks like
Full-time AmeriCorps Members typically serve for 10-12 months at their service site, completing 1700 service hours per term. During their service term, AmeriCorps members receive benefits including: a living allowance to cover basic expenses ($18,700 is the national average, but this amount can vary by program), health insurance (varies by program), childcare assistance for eligible members, loan forbearance, and potential interest payment on qualified student loans.
After their service, AmeriCorps Members are eligible for benefits including the Segal AmeriCorps Education Award (max $7,395), which can be used to repay student loans or pay for future education; an alumni network of 1.3+ million members; and access to Employers of National Service and Schools of National Service.
The dual mission of AmeriCorps: Service and leadership development
As we’ve previously mentioned, the purpose of AmeriCorps is to engage Americans in service to address pressing local and national needs in communities nationwide. As a result, many health, human, and educational services nationwide are bolstered by AmeriCorps members. Our Americorps program at RUSH is just one example of how we can leverage AmeriCorps Members to improve health and human services in our local communities (and we’ll touch on this more later!).
Another purpose of AmeriCorps overall is to provide impactful professional development opportunities for entry-level professionals in the social services field. AmeriCorps alumni report that their service term with AmeriCorps helped them gain important professional skills such as improved leadership, teamwork, and problem-solving skills. Additionally, one study shows that individuals who complete an AmeriCorps program are likely to remain service-focused and civically engaged after completing their service term: AmeriCorps alumni are more likely to stay in the social services sector and more likely to vote, volunteer, and engage in community leadership than individuals in a peer cohort. And overall, engaging in service improves mental health, reduces isolation, and builds resilience.
C4P AmeriCorps at RUSH
At RUSH University Medical Center in Chicago, CHaSCI hosts one location of the C4P AmeriCorps program, which also has sites at the University of Chicago and Ingalls Memorial Hospital. At RUSH, AmeriCorps members extend the reach of RUSH’s program to impact patient experience with care and health outcomes, lower hospitalization rates, and resolve unmet social needs for various RUSH patient populations.
Since 2019, we have completed 6 cohorts of our AmeriCorps program (and we’re gearing up to start the 7th cohort in the first week of September!). Across those 6 cohorts, we’ve hosted 21 AmeriCorps Members, with 3-4 members serving in the program each year.
Tasks conducted by our AmeriCorps team include:
Conducting social determinant of health (SDOH) screenings and resource connection as part of proactive outreach calls and other initiatives integrated into RUSH, the surrounding communities, and population health initiatives
Utilizing electronic health records and a social service referral platform to track screening responses and initiate navigation of resources in collaboration with interprofessional health care teams
Providing support for community initiatives and health promotion workshops with the Department of Social Work and Community Health’s Health Promotion and Disease Prevention team and RUSH Generations
Supporting the VeggieRX food pantry by calling patients to schedule deliveries of fresh produce
Participating in volunteer days in collaboration with Chicago community-based organizations and nonprofits serving our target population
Across these tasks, our AmeriCorps Members serve a few different patient populations:
Patients recently discharged from the Emergency Department, who receive SDOH screening, resource coordination, and referrals
Patients in the Birth Equity program (meaning patients who are pregnant or postpartum), who receive SDOH screening, additional screening specific to the needs of pregnant and postpartum patients, resource coordination, and referrals
RUSH Generations patients, who are supported through technical assistance and facilitation of RUSH Generations programs
Food is Medicine recipients (patients identified as food insecure), who are supported through VeggieRX phone calls
Data shows that our AmeriCorps Program makes a sizable impact on our West Side Chicago communities. In the 2024-2025 program year, our AmeriCorps Members:
Made attempts to contact and screen 3,573 patients for social needs
Reached and screened 1,761 patients for social needs, successfully completing a SDOH screener for 49% of all outreach attempts. To achieve this number, AmeriCorps Members made up to 3 outreach attempts per patient and experimented with different calling timing and techniques to increase pickup rate.
Identified 632 patients with SDOH needs
Sent resources and referrals to 567 patients with SDOH needs
Since AmeriCorps is also a professional development program, AmeriCorps Members at RUSH also engage in a variety of professional development opportunities including shadowing health and social care professionals at RUSH, training and education opportunities, and guided mentorship and goal setting with supervisors. From CHaSCI’s perspective, entry-level job opportunities like AmeriCorps that focus on professional development are important for two reasons: (1) such roles prepare future medical, social work, and public health leaders for success in the next stage of their career or education; and (2) such roles equip the next generation of leaders to bring a social care and SDOH lens to their work in various fields, which ultimately strengthens the integration of fields like social care, healthcare, and medicine as these entry-level professionals advance in their careers.
Recent policy changes
Under the Trump administration, recent policy changes have made it difficult to navigate AmeriCorps funding and program administration. In response to a presidential executive order in February, AmeriCorps placed more than 85% of its workforce on immediate leave with a June 24 termination date, in response to a presidential executive order. In mid-April, DOGE cut 750+ AmeriCorps NCCC members serving in more than 30 states and placed additional agency staff members on administrative leave; and in late April, the federal government notified states that it was immediately canceling grants for approximately 1,031 AmeriCorps programs nationwide, prematurely ending the service of over 32,000 AmeriCorps members and AmeriCorps Seniors volunteers—including our program at RUSH. The reason given for this immediate termination was that “the award no longer effectuates agency priorities,” reflecting the Trump administration’s shift away from health equity work.
Fortunately, since the termination of our program, a few developments have enabled us to continue running our AmeriCorps program. First, lawsuits filed by several states in federal court resulted in a preliminary injunction temporarily blocking cuts to AmeriCorps in the 25 jurisdictions (24 states + DC) that filed lawsuits – which temporarily restored funding to AmeriCorps until further decisions were made. In this June 5 decision, U.S. District Judge Deborah L. Boardman said the administration failed to provide sufficient notice of the cuts, which were announced without warning (nearly $400 million in grants were canceled after business hours on a Friday, and many workers only found out the next day). And second, our AmeriCorps program was approved for funding through an alternative application process through Serve Illinois – which has enabled us to continue the program for the 2025-2026 year!
Looking forward
For our team at CHaSCI, AmeriCorps has become an essential bridge between health care and social care, ensuring patients receive support that goes beyond medical treatment. Our AmeriCorps program helps advance two core facets of CHaSCI’s work:
Our AmeriCorps Members engage in important front-line social care by reaching, screening, and providing resources and referrals to patients with social needs, ultimately working toward our overall goal of health equity and increased healthcare access in Chicago.
AmeriCorps’s focus on professional development is in line with CHaSCI’s commitment to building and strengthening the social care workforce: to maintain and grow a workforce capable of promoting health equity, it’s vital to provide opportunities for entry-level professionals to learn about SDOH, gain interprofessional experience, and build competencies to pursue careers and educational opportunities in social care and related fields. By investing in entry-level professionals, we hope to foster a future generation of leaders committed to bridging social care with healthcare and public health.
We are so excited to welcome our next cohort of AmeriCorps Members on September 2nd! As we look to the next program year, we invite alumni, partners, and community members to join the conversation. Together, we can ensure that the spirit of AmeriCorps—service, resilience, and leadership—continues to thrive.