- The evidence is clear: California needs a diverse health care workforce to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse population. This policy brief provides evidence-based policy recommendations. An accompanying issue brief explores what we know about the diversity of California’s licensed…
- The evidence is clear: California needs a diverse health care workforce to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse population. This issue brief explores what we know about the diversity of California’s licensed health care workforce, what works to increase the diversity of health care…
- Personal Care Aides (PCAs) play a vital role in the direct care workforce, providing essential support to older adults and individuals with disabilities or serious illnesses. PCAs, working alongside home health aides, make up the largest occupational group in the U.S. workforce, helping individuals…
- Background. American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN), Black (B), and Hispanic/Latino (H/L) people are underrepresented in dentistry, yet disproportionately constitute the safety-net dental workforce. We examined the relationship between serving as safety-net providers (SNPs) and self-reported income…
- Advancing health equity requires acknowledging and attending to inequities within the health policy and services research (HSPR) workforce. Although HSPR racial and ethnic diversity has been increasing, the profession still has considerable unfinished work: in 2021, Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous…
- Nurse practitioners (NPs) are important providers of primary care to underserved populations, particularly in areas with lower physician supply. In 2023, California implemented new regulations aimed at improving access to care, especially primary care services, by providing a pathway for NPs to…
- Communication barriers are known to adversely affect patient safety. Yet few health systems assess and track physician non-English language proficiency for use in clinical settings. Barriers to current assessments (usually simulated clinician oral proficiency interviews) include time constraints…
- Objectives: This work describes the process by which the quality of electronic health care data for a public health study was determined. The objectives were to adapt, develop, and implement data quality assessments (DQAs) based on the National Institutes of Health Pragmatic Trials Collaboratory (…
- Background: The Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc., v. Harvard College is likely to result in the matriculation of fewer students from historically excluded racial/ethnic groups at more selective colleges and universities and matriculation of more students at less…
- This study aimed to evaluate the Language Access Systems Improvement (LASI) initiative’s impact on professional interpreter utilization in primary care and to explore patient and clinician perspectives on professional interpreter use. Participants included Cantonese, Mandarin, Spanish, or…
- The COVID-19 pandemic rapidly reshaped health care delivery, notably with a surge in telehealth use driven by changes in Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates. The ensuing wave of research, spanning over 80 studies from 2021 to 2022, explored the impact of telehealth on health outcomes and care…
- Clinicians who speak the language of the patients they care for can help increase access to care and improve patient health outcomes. Researchers, including Healthforce Center’s Director Sunita Mutha, looked at the barriers and facilitators to primary care physicians’ willingness to have their…
- It remains unclear whether the racial-ethnic composition or the socioeconomic profiles of eligible primary care practices better explain practice participation in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Comprehensive Primary Care Plus (CPC+) program.
- As experience with social risk interventions matures, and federal and state agencies consider ways to incentivize social risk interventions, this is an ideal time to pause and ask whether we are going in the right direction with this work. In this perspective piece, the authors highlight that the…
- Patients with language barriers suffer significant health disparities, including adverse events and poor health outcomes. While remote language services can help improve language access, these modalities remain persistently underused. The objective of this study was to understand clinician…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- Little is known about the scope and role of discriminatory experiences in dentistry. The purpose of this study is to document the experiences that American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN), Black, and Hispanic dentists have had with discrimination. SEE PUBLICATION
- Pre-dental post-baccalaureate programs can help address oral health disparities by improving the diversity of the dental workforce pipeline. While long-term outcomes have had a positive impact on underserved areas and communities, dentists of underrepresented minority or socioeconomically…
- 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…
- 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.
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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 (…
- California is facing a shortage of health professionals to meet the needs of its large, diverse, and aging population, and the situation is worsening. Shortages exist across professions and geographies, with sizeable urban and rural underserved populations. Despite increasing population diversity,…
- Although the number of active physicians increased by 21% between 2006 and 2018, and exceeded the 10% population growth, many areas in California face substantial shortages of primary care providers and specialists. California Physicians: A Portrait of Practice presents detailed…
- Nursing is the single largest health profession in the state. These quick reference guides look at supply, demographics, education, distribution, and pay for registered nurses (RNs) and licensed vocational nurses (LVNs), using the most recent data available. Key findings include: Non-White RNs…