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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Drug overdoses have reached a historic milestone of over 100,000 deaths in a single year, 75,673 related to opioids. The acceleration in opioid-related deaths coupled with stark health inequities demands a close examination of opioid use disorder (OUD) treatment barriers and swift consideration...
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Increasing rates of Alzheimer disease and related dementia (ADRD) has resulted in greater reliance on adult day health centers (ADHCs) and their skilled workforce. Little is known about staffing in ADHCs that provide ADRD services compared with ADHCs that do not. This study examines whether there...
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Older adults with serious mental illness (SMI) often have multiple comorbidities and complex medication schedules. Shortages of behavioral health specialists (BHSs), especially in rural areas, frequently make primary care providers (PCPs) the only clinician managing this complex population. The aim...
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In California, one of the most culturally diverse states in the country, health care must bridge cultural and linguistic divides to serve all communities equitably. As trusted community members with lived experience, community health workers and promotores (CHW/Ps) have a long history of connecting...
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Nationwide experts on rural health assert that leadership training would benefit health and health care in rural communities. Most available leadership development programs for health care leaders in rural and border regions of California are year-long hybrid or virtual only. Existing programs have...
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This report reviews the use of teledentistry following the COVID-19 pandemic in 4 states—California, Maine, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—and the supports needed to enhance dental care in a post-COVID-19 world. States were selected for case studies based on the following parameters: existence of...
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Buprenorphine is associated with decreased mortality from opioid use disorder, but prescribing is limited in office-based settings to clinicians with federal waivers. To expand this workforce, on April 28, 2021, the US federal government eliminated educational requirements for waivers to prescribe...
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Previous research has documented shortages of personal care aides who provide Medicaid home and community-based services, but there are few detailed geographic data to determine the areas of greatest need and assess the availability of personal care aides nationwide. Using 2013–17 data from the...
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Objective This study examines the individual, educational, and policy factors that predict dentists pursuing postgraduate dental (PGD) training. Methods Individual dentist records from the 2017 American Dental Association Masterfile were linked with pre-doctoral training attributes and state-level...
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Objective Postgraduate dental (PGD) primary care training has grown significantly. This study examines the individual, educational, community, and policy factors that predict practice patterns of PGD-trained dentists. Study design Individual dentist records from the 2017 American Dental Association...
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Designing interprofessional primary care teams composed of physicians and nurse practitioners (NPs) is a national priority. We assessed how profession and gender affect teamwork and job satisfaction among primary care physicians and NPs by using survey data from 186 physicians and 398 NPs...
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A healthcare workforce representative of the race/ethnicity composition of the population it serves is central to addressing systemic health inequities. The aim of this study was to assess workforce trends of underrepresented minority (URM) nurses using the National Sample Survey of Registered...
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During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was slower growth in the number of new waivers authorizing clinicians to provide buprenorphine treatment for opioid use disorder. However, treatment capacity grew at a stable rate as a result of already authorized clinicians obtaining waivers for larger patient...
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The toll of mental illness in the US is substantial: 1 in 5 adults live with a mental illness. As the population ages, greater numbers of individuals will need care for the comorbidities associated with older age and their mental health needs. There is a lack of mental health services nationwide,...
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To describe the perception of professional climate in health services and policy research (HSPR) and efforts to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the HSPR workforce and workplaces, researchers administered the HSPR Workplace Culture Survey online to health services and policy...
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In October of 2021, California mandated commercial insurance coverage of screening for adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in addition to ACEs screening already covered for the Medi-Cal enrollees. California is the first state to expand ACEs screening coverage, but it is possible other states may...
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Buprenorphine is a life-saving medication for people with opioid use disorder (OUD). U.S. federal law allows advanced practice clinicians (APCs), such as nurse practitioners (NPs) and physician assistants (PAs), to obtain a federal waiver to prescribe buprenorphine in office-based practices....
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There is a lack of diversity in the dental workforce. Efforts to enhance underrepresented minority (URM) recruitment and retention within dental school exist, but little effort has been made to track URM providers through education and practice. This study assesses the status of workforce diversity...
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There are few educational programs in the United States that have a primary focus on preparing nurses to engage in all levels of public health, health policy, and climate change. The United Nations sustainability development goals (SDG) and the Future of Nursing 2020-2030: Charting a Path to...
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In her 2020 book Caste: The Origin of Our Discontents, Isabel Wilkerson argues that a caste system not only exists in the US, but also operates as a hidden force affecting social inequality. In this paper, Healthforce Center’s Associate Director for Research Dr. Elizabeth Mertz and colleagues...