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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Compared to white individuals, Black, Indigenous, and Latinx individuals have decreased access to addiction care, lower rates of addiction treatment, and higher rates of incarceration, non-fatal overdose, and death. Racial/ethnic concordance between patients and clinicians has been associated with...
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The California Improvement Network (CIN) is a community of health care professionals committed to identifying and spreading ideas for better primary care delivery. This issue of CIN Connections offers ways to implement quality improvement efforts that intentionally advance health equity in primary...
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The purpose of this study is to describe Mexican-American parents' experiences navigating the dental care system for their children. The study used qualitative interviews to collect data.
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Registered nurses (RNs) are a key component of the long-term care (LTC) workforce and prior research demonstrates their importance to ensuring patient safety in LTC settings. RNs who work in LTC settings earn less than those who work in hospitals and also are more likely to be from racial and...
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Health care organizations face growing pressure to improve their patients’ social conditions, such as housing, food, and economic insecurity. Little is known about the motivations and concerns of health care organizations when implementing activities aimed at improving patients’ social conditions....
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The objective of this pilot study is to evaluate the attitudes and self-efficacy of Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experience (APPE) Conference Leaders (CLs) after completing the Well-being Promotion (WelPro) training program developed at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of...
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The health care safety-net system, a patchwork of programs and providers that serve Californians with low incomes, faces unique challenges in recruiting and maintaining its clinical staff due to workforce shortages and inequitable distribution of health care providers across California. To address...
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Clinicians and policy makers are exploring the role of primary care in improving patients’ social conditions, yet little research examines strategies used in clinical settings to assist patients with social needs. This study used interviews focused on how organizations develop and implement case...
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This study seeks to measure wage differences between registered nurses (RNs) working in long-term care (LTC) (eg, nursing homes, home health) and non-LTC settings (eg, hospitals, ambulatory care) and whether differences are associated with the characteristics of the RN workforce between and within...
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Over a decade following the nationwide push to implement electronic health records (EHRs), the focus has shifted to addressing the cognitive burden associated with their use. Labor and delivery nurses may encounter unique challenges when using EHRs because they also interact with an electronic...
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Dental therapists (DTs) are primary care dental providers, used globally, and were introduced in the United States (US) in 2005. DTs have now been adopted in 13 states and several Tribal nations. This study aimed to qualitatively examine the drivers and outcomes of the US dental therapy movement...
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The goal of this study was to explore challenges and opportunities that dental public health (DPH) residents and recent graduates experienced during and after their residency training programs in the US. In this qualitative study, to recruit participants, study invitations were distributed to 93...
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Personal Care Aides (PCAs) are vital to the well-being of people with disabilities yet there are shortages of these workers in many parts of the country. PCAs are employed to support people with disabilities by providing assistance with basic daily needs (such as meal preparation, bathing, dressing...
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The nation requires a workforce adequately sized and educated in the specialty areas needed to address the health needs of all people that practices in the places, settings, and specialties where they are needed most; that works efficiently and effectively; and practices in systems that protects...
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Although many factors contribute to the high prevalence of oral health problems and widening disparities in the U.S., limited oral health literacy has emerged as a major contributor. Oral health literacy (OHL) refers to people’s abilities to access, understand and use oral health information to...
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Different staffing configurations in primary and geriatric care practices could have implications for how best to deliver services that are essential for a growing population of older adults. Using data from a 2018 survey of physicians (MDs) and nurse practitioners (NPs) working in primary and...
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Health systems are uniquely positioned to advance health equity in communities by ensuring that workers are well, resilient, and equipped to deliver high-quality care. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown how work environments in health systems affects the well-being of workers, whose capacity to...
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Job satisfaction is a critical component of the professional work environment and is often ascertained through surveys that include structured or open-ended questions. Differences between the job satisfaction clusters were mostly driven by satisfaction with workload, adequacy of the clerical...
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The use of professional interpretation is associated with improvements in overall healthcare of patients with limited English proficiency. For these patients, it is important to understand whether quality of professional interpretation in-person is preserved using remote interpretation modalities (...
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The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) State Innovation Models (SIMs) initiative funded 17 states to implement health care payment and delivery system reforms to improve health system performance. This study aimed to evaluate SIMs role in improved health information technology (HIT)...