California has a well-documented health workforce shortage, especially in rural areas. Accelerated education programs are one of the many approaches being employed to reduce shortages by shortening the educational pathway and increasing the production of qualified health care providers.

This issue brief explores what we know about accelerated health professions educational programs in California and how they impact the essential workforce goals of increasing supply, equity, diversity, access to education, cost, and time to entry into practice, and, ultimately, access to care in low-income and rural areas (geography and distribution) and improved health outcomes. Accelerated programs are not a one-size-fits-all solution to California’s health workforce shortages and may even contribute to workforce challenges by being less diverse and as expensive as their traditional counterparts.