From low pay to workplace culture, obstacles litter the path to diversity in EMS
A single mother, Tashina Hosey quit her job at a Pittsburgh post office when she was assigned to work a seventh consecutive day just as her second daughter was about to be born. Desperate to find her next paycheck, she stumbled upon a free 10-week emergency medical technician course.
Called Freedom House 2.0, the program trains people like Hosey – unemployed, single parents, low income – following in the footsteps of the original Freedom House, a pioneering Pittsburgh ambulance service staffed by predominantly disadvantaged Black residents that was at the vanguard of efforts to modernize the delivery of pre-hospital care in America in the 1960s and 1970s.
