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.
- In 1970, health care constituted 7% of gross domestic product, but now represents nearly 20%. Conversely, in 1970, manufacturing accounted for 24% of the economy and now represents 11%. Health care recently passed manufacturing as the largest sector in the United States’ economy. It is incumbent on...
- The COVID-19 pandemic worsened the opioid overdose crisis. Buprenorphine management for opioid use disorder (OUD) reduces overdose risk and can be offered in office-based settings or via telehealth. Federal regulations require that clinicians complete training and obtain a waiver from the Drug...
- The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in unprecedented adoption and implementation of virtual primary care services, and little is known about whether and how virtual care services will be provided after the pandemic ends. We aim to identify how administrators at health care organizations perceive the...
- The California Improvement Network (CIN) is focused on effectively integrating equity into health care improvement projects. Informed by its Racial Health Equity Workgroup and developed in partnership with HealthBegins, this practical toolkit is designed to help health care organizations —...
- Primary care practices are responding to calls to incorporate patients' social risk factors, such as housing, food, and economic insecurity, into clinical care. Healthcare likely relies on the expertise and resources of community-based organizations to improve patients' social conditions, yet...
- Objective/Issue Little is known about the contributions of different provider specialties in prescribing medications for nursing home residents living with dementia. In this study, we examine prescribing patterns for common psychiatric medications and for opioid and non-opioid analgesics in long-...
- Adding new types of clinicians is often a policy strategy to address clinician shortages and enhance access to health care. In oral health, several states have sought to expand the dental workforce to include dental therapists, which are primary dental care providers who can evaluate and treat...
- There are concerns about the capacity of rural primary care due to potential workforce shortages and patients with disproportionately more clinical and socioeconomic risks. Little research examines the configuration and delivery of primary care along the spectrum of rurality. We aimed to compare...
- 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
- Background Peer support providers (peers) are increasingly delivering behavioral health treatment, but evaluation of their impact on client outcomes remains limited. Prior studies to determine the effectiveness of peers identify inconsistent training requirements and role definition as barriers to...
- In 2016, the California Department of Health Care Services launched the Dental Transformation Initiative (DTI) to address statewide underperformance in providing dental services to Medicaid-eligible children and youth. The DTI allowed selected counties and other qualified organizations to create...
- The 2020-21 Board of Registered Nursing (BRN) School Survey was based on prior BRN surveys and modified based on recommendations from the Nursing Education & Workforce Advisory Committee (NEWAC), which consists of nursing education and industry stakeholders from across California. The...
- Pathy’s Principles and Practice of Geriatric Medicine, Sixth Edition delivers a comprehensive overview of the subject, offering up-to-date, evidence-based, information about the many, and varied, problems suffered by ageing patients. In this latest edition, the authors take a refreshed approach to...
- Health care organizations increasingly recognize the impact of social needs on health outcomes. As organizations develop and scale efforts to address social needs, little is known about the optimal role for clinicians in providing social care. In this study, the authors aimed to understand how...
- Studies estimate that approximately one-third of all opioid prescriptions (Rxs) from dentists are associated with nonsurgical dental procedures, which suggests unwarranted opioid use. The authors conducted a retrospective longitudinal cohort study of adult Medicaid beneficiaries using...
- The only policy text written specifically for APRN students, this preeminent resource delivers a sweeping examination of policy impact on the full implementation of the APRN role across all environments, including its effectiveness on specific patient populations. The expanded third edition—...
- Objective Some health systems and emergency medical services agencies in the United States are leveraging the versatility and experience of community paramedics to meet needs for COVID-19 testing, care, and vaccination. This report describes models of community paramedic practice that communities...
- 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...
- Kalisch and colleagues developed one of the reliable and valid measures of missed nursing care, the MISSCARE survey, which has been used extensively in medical surgical care and has been adapted to pediatric and neonatal intensive care. Our team previously adapted the MISSCARE Survey for the labor...
- Issue Health care workers in long-term care (LTC) settings face concerns related to financial security resulting from low wages, inconsistent hours, and a lack of benefits. These factors contribute to higher rates of LTC workers holding multiple jobs. The COVID-19 pandemic has added a new set of...
- 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 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...
- 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...
- 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....
- 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...
- 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...
- 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...
- 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...
- 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...