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.
- 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,...
- The objective of this study was to evaluate the degree to which registered nurses perceive their labor and delivery units to be adhering to Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses (AWHONN) staffing guidelines. In late 2016 and early 2017, labor nurses in selected hospitals in...
- This resource is designed to serve as a primer for anyone interested in gaining a better understanding of health payment models in California and nationally. It focuses on concepts and terminology related to value-based payment models and to health care delivery models and systems. The publication...
- This issue of CIN Connections includes strategies to manage total cost of care. It features Mitch Katz, MD, head of the largest public health care system in the country, and other health care leaders across the state who share their experiences managing risk and total cost of care. Included in this...
- There is a shortage of clinicians authorized to prescribe medications to treat opioid use disorder. Nurse practitioners (NPs) and physician assistants (PAs) were allowed to obtain waivers to prescribe buprenorphine beginning in 2016. They investigated the proportions of NPs and PAs with waivers in...
- Introduction Shortages of behavioral health providers, particularly prescribing clinicians, are widespread nationally. Although rapidly increasing numbers of psychiatric mental health nurse practitioners (PMHNPs) could increase access to behavioral health services, state limitations on scope of...
- Background This document summarizes the eighth annual survey of hospital registered nurse (RN) employers. The surveys collect data on demand for RNs, changes that have occurred over time, and information specific to the hiring of newly-graduated nurses. Results The vast majority of hospital chief...
- Projections of future supply and demand for registered nurses (RNs) have been published by the California Board of Registered Nursing (BRN) since 2005. The forecasts are intended to guide educators, employers, and policymakers to take action to ensure that supply is adequate to meet future health...
- Overuse and inappropriate use of emergency departments (EDs) remains an important issue within the US health care system, as an estimated 37% of ED visits involve nonurgent care that could be provided in other care settings such as physician offices and urgent care centers. Inappropriate ED use has...
- In May, 2018, 40 national leaders and experts were convened to make workforce development recommendations that address the needs of persons living with serious illness in community settings. Over the course of two and a half days, attendees offered sixteen broad recommendations that included...
- This document is a guide for primary care organizations and care teams working to integrate substance use disorder (SUD) treatment services. It provides proven strategies, best practices, and tools used by organizations within California to expand the capability of primary care teams in commercial...
- Nurse practitioners (NPs) constitute the largest and fastest growing group of nonphysician primary care clinicians. As the primary care physician (PCP) shortage persists, examination of trends in primary care NP supply, particularly in relation to populations most in need, will inform strategies to...
- Some regions of California face nursing shortages, according to new projections of supply and demand through 2035. The forecasts, which account for population growth, population aging, and anticipated changes in the numbers of new registered nurse (RN) graduates, are the first regional projections...
- Some regions of California face nursing shortages, according to new projections of supply and demand through 2035. The forecasts, which account for population growth, population aging, and anticipated changes in the numbers of new registered nurse (RN) graduates, are the first regional projections...