Profiles of Health Professions in California

Healthforce Center has prepared a series of brief reports on California’s health care workforce in seven health professions for the University of California Office of the President.

• Dentistry 
• Medicine (MDs and DOs)
• Nursing (RNs and APRNs)
• Optometry
• Pharmacy
• Public Health
• Veterinary Medicine

These reports summarize information from multiple sources regarding the supply, distribution, and demographic characteristics of California’s workforce in these professions as well as the pipelines of trainees in these professions. The reports also summarize findings from analyses of the adequacy of futures supplies of workers in these professions to meet future demand for their services. UC leaders are using them to inform strategic planning for health professions education in the UC system.

Several common themes emerge across the seven reports.

• The number of students educated in these professions in California has grown substantially over the past decade, primarily due to the opening of new programs at private colleges and universities.
• Black and Latinx people are underrepresented in these professions relative to their share of California’s population.
• In most of these professions, the share of the workforce that is female has increased substantially since the 1970s.
• Workers in these professions are not evenly distributed across California. Rural and lower-income areas of the state have lower supplies than urban and affluent areas.