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.
- The 2018-2019 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. This survey...
- Women in academic medicine are paid less than their male peers. This salary difference is often attributed to differences in rank and promotion. The goal of this study was to investigate whether sex pay differences exist at the highest ranks of academic medicine: among clinical department chairs....
- In his 2020 State of the State address, California Governor Gavin Newsom called for the state’s counties to spend Mental Health Services Act funds more quickly to assist the 1 in 6 California adults who suffer from mental illness and the 1 in 13 California children who suffer from a serious...
- The 2018-2019 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. This...
- Ongoing payment reforms are pressing health systems to reorganize delivery of care to achieve greater value, improve access, integrate patient care among settings, advance population health, and address social determinants of health. Many organizations are experimenting with new ways of unleashing...
- A growing body of literature is examining the relationships between socio-demographic factors influencing recruitment and retention of students in higher education. The purpose of this study was to explore the characteristics of first generation to college (First-Gen) nursing applicants including...
- An estimated one in ten adults over the age of 60 suffers some form of elder abuse. A key component of addressing ongoing elder abuse and the likelihood that its prevalence will increase as a result of a rapidly growing older adult population is the network of local and state agencies that form the...
- Policy & Politics in Nursing and Health Care, 8th Edition continues to be the leading text on nursing action and activism. Approximately 150 expert contributors present a wide range of topics in policies and politics, providing a more complete background than can be found in any other policy...
- Policy & Politics in Nursing and Health Care, 8th Edition continues to be the leading text on nursing action and activism. Approximately 150 expert contributors present a wide range of topics in policies and politics, providing a more complete background than can be found in any other policy...
- The purpose of this systematic review is to determine the frequency of violent or aggressive behaviour towards healthcare workers in inpatient psychiatric settings in the United States. To achieve this aim, five databases were searched to find English-language quantitative studies reporting...
- Electronic health record (EHR) systems provide investigators with rich data from which to examine actual impacts of care delivery in real-world settings. However, confounding is a major concern when comparison groups are not randomized. This article introduced a step-by-step strategy to construct...
- Community paramedicine is a growing health care model in which emergency medical professionals such as paramedics and emergency medical technicians (EMTs) work beyond their traditional emergency care roles and provide nonemergency care. This model is based on local need and seeks to avoid...
- Caries indices, the basis of epidemiologic caries measures, are not easily obtained in clinical settings. This study’s objective was to design, test, and validate an automated program (Valid Electronic Health Record Dental Caries Indices Calculator Tool [VERDICT]) to calculate caries indices from...
- California and the United States face shortages of qualified clinicians to provide prenatal, labor, and postpartum care, as well as women’s health services.There has been no growth in the number of obstetricians nationwide since 1980 despite increases in the number of women of childbearing age and...
- Community health workers (CHWs) are vital contributors to high quality and equitable health services, particularly to vulnerable populations. CHWs provide a key link between community resources and the clinical team as well as advocate on behalf of communities regarding social determinants of...
- This report describes provisions of California’s state budget for fiscal year 2019-2020 that either directly fund the California Future Health Workforce Commission's recommendations or fund other initiatives that are consistent with these recommendations. The Commission’s recommendations, released...
- The purpose of this report is to outline the findings from the second year of the San Francisco Support at Home (S@H) program. This report provides some background information on the program, but more information and context can be found in the preliminary report. Overall, the evaluation has two...
- The rising cost of higher education raises concerns about equitable access to professional education for underrepresented minorities (URMs). This is problematic since URMs play critical roles in the health care field. They often speak patients’ languages and/or relate to them on both cultural and...
- New technological advances could mitigate rising health workforce demand, but will not replace the direct care workforce, according to this report. The report includes a taxonomy of currently available and emerging technology categories based on the products sold by 115 companies, in addition to...
- Home health and personal care aides are one of the largest groups of health care workers in the US, with nearly three million people providing direct care for people with serious illness living in the community. These home care workers face challenges in recruitment, training, retention, and...
- Seven million Californians, the majority of them Latino, African American, and Native American, live in areas experiencing shortfalls of primary care, dental care, or mental health care providers. Without accurate, robust and timely health workforce data, the state will be unable to adequately...
- With rising costs, increasing burnout, and a rapidly changing environment, health care leaders may feel like they’re facing an uphill battle. This issue of CIN Connections features tips, advice, and actionable information for health care leaders to effectively lead change in their organizations....
- The purpose of this study is to examine practice patterns of graduates of primary care dental postgraduate (PGD) training programs with a longstanding history of Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) funding. Primary care fields supported include Advanced Education in General...
- There are insufficient numbers of practicing geriatricians to meet current demand for their services, and the shortage is projected to worsen in the coming decades as the number of older Americans rapidly increases. Understanding how to best leverage geriatricians as members of an overall care team...
- By 2030, California’s senior population will double to 9 million, but the state faces an estimated shortage of 200,000 home health and home care aides. To exacerbate the problem, California’s home health and home care aides are underutilized because of some of the most restrictive scope of practice...
- Missed nursing care is an important measure of nursing care quality that is sensitive to nurse staffing and is associated with patient outcomes in medical–surgical and pediatric inpatient settings. Missed nursing care during labor and birth has not been studied, yet childbirth represents the most...
- Although access to dental care has improved over time, many children still face difficulty in obtaining services. One strategy to increase access is through mobile dental services, often in collaboration with schools, Head Start programs, and school‐based health centers. This study evaluates a...
- In May 2018, 40 leaders and scholars from universities, delivery organizations, professional associations, advocacy groups, government agencies, and private insurance companies convened in Napa, California, for a Workforce Summit organized by the University of California, San Francisco, and...
- In May 2018, 40 leaders and scholars from universities, delivery organizations, professional associations, advocacy groups, government agencies, and private insurance companies convened in Napa, California, for a Workforce Summit organized by the University of California, San Francisco, and...
- The lack of an adequately prepared workforce is a critical barrier to delivering high-quality community-based care for individuals living with serious illness. This article presents 16 consensus-based recommendations to improve the capacity of the workforce in this area within the next 5 years,...