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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Between February 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic began and August 2020, the nation has watched over 5.2 million individuals become infected and over 167,000 deaths. Unfortunately, many of the infections and deaths have been nursing home residents and staff. To date, the Centers for Medicare and...
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Learning health‐care systems are foundational for measuring and achieving value in oral health care. This article describes the components of a preventive dental care program and the quality of care in a large dental accountable care organization. A retrospective study design describes and...
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Holistic review is a conceptual framework that encourages medical schools to consider a wide range of criteria in deciding which applicants to admit. It promotes a balanced approach to the admissions process, taking into account both the need to admit students whose Medical College Admissions Test...
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The purpose of this report is to outline the findings from the third year (July 1, 2019-June 30, 2020) of the San Francisco Support at Home (S@H) pilot program. This report provides some background information on the program, but more information and context can be found in the Year 1 and Year 2...
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Country-level data suggest large differences in the supply of health professionals among European countries. However, little is know about the regional supply of health professionals taking a cross-country comparative perspective. The aim of the study was to analyse the regional distribution of...
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Populations residing in rural America have lower rates of dental care utilization, higher rates of dental caries, less water fluoridation, and fewer dentists per capita when compared to those living in urban environments. Dental workforce shortages in rural communities are endemic, despite the...
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Although there has been significant progress across states to remove or diminish barriers to the exercise of full scope of practice by advanced practice registered nurses (APRN), state regulations continue to unnecessarily restrict APRN practice in most of the United States. This article integrates...
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The objective of this study was to estimate trends in the percentage of Medicare beneficiaries cared for by nurse practitioners from 2012 to 2017, to characterize beneficiaries cared for by nurse practitioners in 2017, and to examine how the percentage of beneficiaries cared for by nurse...
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Several trends suggest that the nurse practitioner (NP) workforce has untapped potential to expand healthcare capacity to increase access to care. The aim of this study was to examine NPs as usual source of care providers and investigate their relationship with state scope-of-practice regulations.
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The objective of this study was to explore how home care workers and the agencies that employ them interact with their state’s nurse practice act in the provision of care. Using a qualitative case study approach, they selected four states with varying levels of restrictiveness in their nurse...
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The delivery of medical care services in US nursing homes (NH) is dependent on a workforce comprised of physicians, nurse practitioners (NP), and physician assistants (PA). Each of these disciplines operate under a unique regulatory framework while adhering to common standards of care. NH provider...
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Suspected opioid overdose deaths are surging during the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing by more than 40% in May and continuing to rise. The short-term emergency authorizations for audio-only buprenorphine treatment during COVID-19 have helped us reach people previously unable to access...
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Patient safety is a global concern, yet little is known about how and whether perceptions of patient safety culture (PSC) vary by nurses' countries of origin and preparation. This is particularly important in American nursing homes (NHs), which are increasingly hiring non-US born and prepared...
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The dental workforce is increasingly gender diverse. This study analyzed gender differences in dental practice using the American Dental Association’s 2010-2016 Masterfile and the 2017 Survey of Dental Practice. Between 2010 and 2016, the proportion of women working in dentistry increased from 24.5...
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This study examines whether a portable, school‐based, preventive oral health program was associated with reduced use of treatment services over time. They obtained encounter data from Community Health Center, Inc. (CHC) in Connecticut that operates such a program. They followed cohorts of children...
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This report presents an overview of current and future supply and demand for California’s public health workforce. Public health professionals perform a wide range of services aimed at creating the conditions in which people can be healthy. Some public health professionals provide services to...
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Optometrists are health care professionals who have earned a Doctor of Optometry (OD) degree. Common tasks performed by optometrists include conducting eye examinations, diagnosing vision problems (such as nearsightedness or farsightedness), addressing binocular vision issues, diagnosing and...
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Dentists are healthcare professionals who diagnose and treat problems related to oral health. Common tasks include repairing or removing damaged teeth, filling cavities, performing root canals, placing sealants or whitening agents on teeth and making models and measurements for dental appliances (e...
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This report presents an overview of California’s veterinarian workforce. The majority of veterinarians care for companion animals (i.e., pets). Others work in settings such as agriculture, research, and public health. As a health sciences discipline with expertise across multiple species and...
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Pharmacists are healthcare professionals who work with patients, physicians and other healthcare providers to ensure that patients receive the safest, most effective and least costly medications. They communicate knowledge about drugs, dispense drugs and manage patients whose chronic conditions...