News

What's on Tap in 2022: Next Steps for Transforming Health Care

In my last post, I promised to share what Healthforce Center is excited to focus on in 2022 as we celebrate our 30th anniversary. For three decades, we have been committed to advancing health equity, developing health leaders, and examining the health care workforce in support of effective policy…

Apply Now for Leadership Program for Los Angeles Clinics

Community health centers and clinics are critical providers of health care access for uninsured and underserved populations and are central to advancing health equity. To improve care delivery, health centers require skillful, confident, and resilient leaders who are equipped to achieve systems…

COVID-19 Is Reshaping California’s Health Workforce

Evidence is mounting that American health care workers are quitting in large numbers. The health care sector has lost nearly half a million workers (PDF) since February 2020, and new data suggest that during the pandemic 18% of health care workers have quit and 12% have been laid off.

A Retrospective of 2021 Progress at Healthforce Center

If 2020 was the year of a collective reckoning on racial injustice across the nation, then 2021 was the year of laser-like focus on how to redouble our efforts to advance equity and become more anti-racist. As Healthforce Center at UCSF will celebrate our 30th anniversary in 2022, we are taking…

Well-Being Strategies for the Health Care Workforce

Health systems are uniquely positioned to advance health equity by ensuring that their own workers are well, supported, and equipped to deliver high-quality care. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown how work environments in health systems affect the well-being of workers, whose capacity to deliver safe…

Dr. Elizabeth Mertz to Lead Research at Healthforce Center at UCSF

Healthforce Center at UCSF is excited to announce that Dr. Elizabeth Mertz has been appointed Associate Director of Research to succeed Dr. Joanne Spetz. In this role, Mertz will be responsible for developing new research opportunities and cultivating faculty connections.

Seven Lessons on Cultivating Connections and Staff Engagement

With September comes a return to classes at UC San Francisco, and a new cycle of learning begins. Healthforce Center uses a dashboard of metrics to support and evaluate its internal learning and development. This year, I expected our staff engagement scores to be negatively affected by the…

California Faces Short-Term Nursing Shortage from COVID-19 Retirements

California will face a significant shortfall of registered nurses over the next five years due to long-term trends that have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new report by the UCSF Health Workforce Research Center on Long-Term Care.

A New Effort to Train Health Workers Reimagines Health Care

Orlando Elizondo has spent a lot of time thinking about how health care is delivered – not in doctor’s offices or emergency rooms, but in the streets, at your front door, at church. He is a consultant whose clients include UC San Francisco, where a years-long effort at the Healthforce Center has…

Partnering to Solve Complex Problems: Advice from Dr. Sunita Mutha

“Show up fully. Move at a slow enough pace that you can be creative together. Leave room to be delighted. Be overly communicative.” This advice about how to build and nurture partnerships in the face of complex health care challenges was offered by Dr. Sunita Mutha, director of Healthforce Center…

You Can’t Just Be Anti-Racist at Work

“Structural racism.” “Institutional racism.” “Societal racism.” These are phrases that we commonly hear today that signal acknowledgement of the breadth and depth with which white supremacy maintains power in our lives.

How COVID-19 Has Impacted the Nursing Workforce

“Whenever somebody says, I think we have a nursing shortage, I think the answer we should all provide to that is, what do you mean by shortage? And where is it happening? It's really almost the beginning of the question, not the answer,” said Dr. Joanne Spetz, associate director of research at…