At Healthforce Center, our research on the health care workforce offers timely analysis and guidance for providers, policymakers and funders in addressing critical delivery and improvement challenges. We have a team of nationally recognized research experts who work to define issues and support health policy change with rigorous analysis, high-quality data and actionable recommendations.
Our expertise covers the entire health workforce — the full range of licensed professions, credentialed occupations, and emerging roles such as community health workers and peer providers, and across all types of settings from acute to long-term care. We specialize in examining evolving trends in care models, care team composition, and promising new models for the delivery of high-quality health care.
Committed to Improving Health Equity
Our commitment to improving health equity and ensuring a diverse health workforce translates into research that emphasizes expanding cultural competence and language concordance, promoting workforce diversity through education and development programs, and evaluating care models that ensure health equity.
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Research examining productivity, quality and outcomes of traditional pediatric dental care are generally lacking. The literature shows that education, qualifications, and roles are changing with case examples of success, but what these changes portend for patient care remains an open question. New...
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This study describes the program requirements, workforce competencies, and barriers for dementia capable care coordination within health plans from seven states participating in the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services demonstration programs for dually-eligible Medicare and Medicaid...
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The Respiratory Care Board of California was facing numerous issues that were expected to affect the future of the respiratory care workforce. These issues included the impact of changing the educational requirement for entry into practice from an associate’s degree to a baccalaureate degree; the...
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Background Childbirth is a leading reason for hospital admission in the USA, and most labor care is provided by registered nurses under physician or midwife supervision in a nurse-managed care model. Yet, there are no validated quality measures for maternity care that are thoughtful about the role...
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Childbirth is a leading reason for hospital admission in the USA and most labor care is provided by registered nurses under physician or midwife supervision in a nurse-managed care model. Yet, there are no validated nurse-sensitive quality measures for maternity care. We aimed to engage primary...
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Introduction Nurse practitioner (NP) prescribing continues to be a contentious policy issue, and studies systematically examining NP prescribing are lacking. The aim of this study was to conduct a descriptive analysis comparing the prescribing services of NPs with those of primary care physicians (...
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This report updates a literature review on peer support providers prepared in 2015. Peer support workers fulfill a broad range of tasks ad job titles, in a broad range of mental health and substance use disorders recovery settings, and in various service models, although there is a lack of...
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Is California prepared to meet growing demand for primary care? This report is the first in a series of three Healthforce Center at UCSF reports that will provide information to help policymakers, consumers and leaders of health care delivery organizations and educational institutions...
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Minority racial/ethnic pediatric populations and those living in poverty are at greater risk of exposure to trauma, development of mental health disorders and school failure, yet are less likely to have access to mental health services (MHS). School-based health centers (SBHCs) staffed with mental...
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This publication, which is part of a special issue for the journal Health Services Research on the evolving US health care workforce, describes innovative roles for medical assistants (MAs) in the rapidly changing health care environment. Medical assistants are one of the fastest growing...
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As labs face workforce shortages, could medical laboratory technicians (MLTs) help fill the gap? California faces laboratory workforce shortages to meet the healthcare demands of the population. This national study compares the California MLT workforce to the rest of the country. The California MLT...
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Community health workers (CHWs) and promotores de salud are playing an increasingly important role in community-based and clinical care settings. This research, supported by the Blue Shield of California Foundation, represents the culmination of the first phase of a two-part project aimed at...
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There is a widely accepted observation that the current health care delivery model in the U.S was not developed to manage care needs associated with extended life expectancy and growing rates of chronic conditions. Remote monitoring programs aim to anticipate/identify illness exacerbations and...
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The Black population in the US experiences disparities in oral health. Black adults are twice as likely to have unmet dental needs when compared to Whites and face many barriers to accessing dental care. What role could the lack of racial diversity in the dental workforce play? This study finds...
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The purpose of this article is to describe the American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) dentist workforce, the general practice patterns of these providers, and their contributions to oral health care for AI/AN and underserved patients. Full Publication
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The importance of oral health for overall well-being cannot be overstated. Yet the US dental delivery system struggles to address effectively the two most common oral diseases (caries and periodontal disease), which are among the most prevalent of all chronic diseases and are largely preventable....
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The underrepresentation of Blacks, Hispanics or Latinos, and American Indians or Alaska Natives among dentists raises concerns about the diversity of the dental workforce, disparities in access to dental care and in oral health status, and social justice. We quantified the shortage of...
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Mobile integrated healthcare – community paramedicine (MIH-CP) is a new model of care that trains paramedics to deliver a broader range of services than traditional emergency response and transport of people to emergency departments (ED). By 2014, more than 100 emergency medical services (EMS)...
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Registered Dental Hygienists in Alternative Practice (RDHAP) are licensed registered dental hygienists with specialized training that allow them to practice in settings outside of the traditional dental office. RDHAPs have been shown over the past 20 years to practice safely and effectively, and...
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This study, which was published in Health Affairs, was the first major data analysis of hospital palliative care programs’ workforce. The growing field of palliative care, which affects nearly all Americans, focuses on improving quality of life for patients with serious illnesses – including...