Health Workforce Research e-Library

This storymap describes a study of personal care aides in rural communities.

Emerging technological advances have the potential to assist the long-term care (LTC) workforce in caring for an aging population in the home and LTC settings. Technology may change workforce needs and alleviate increasing workforce demand. This article analyzes emerging health technologies that may assist, replace, and/or support recruitment and retention of the workforce in home and LTC settings.

Teledentistry is the use of information and communication technology to deliver virtual oral health services in real time (synchronous) or through store-and-forward (asynchronous) methods. Regulatory guidance during the COVID-19 pandemic facilitated the swift adoption and expansion of teledentistry. However, considerable variability in regulation of teledentistry by states limits the ability of clinicians to provide virtual oral health care. This infograph illustrates the variation in teledentistry regulation by state to help oral health stakeholders understand those differences.

This study provides an update on the income gap between men and women in dentistry, evaluating the impact of dentists’ household, personal, and employment characteristics on income differences.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of teledentistry was limited, The utility of teledentistry was widely questioned in light of the predominately procedural nature of dentistry. Due to the closures of dental practices and organizations during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, teledentistry quickly became a useful tool for dental providers to connect with patients. This report 1) reviews the enabling statutes and regulations for the provision of teledentistry services in each of the 51 regulatory jurisdictions in the US, and 2) discusses themes that emerged from dental provider interviews on the use of teledentistry prior to, during, and subsequent to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Increasing the diversity of the behavioral health workforce is critical to providing culturally competent and responsive behavioral health care to minority communities. This study used the National Survey of College Graduates (NSCG) to understand the pipeline of diverse Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) graduates to Master of Social Work (MSW) programs in order to assess how student demographics, educational programs, and loan debt burden impact pathways into the profession.

This study addressed three research questions: (1) Who constitutes the community based HR workforce? (2) Who provides behavioral health services at HR organizations? (3) Do referrals differ by the type of HR?

The COVID-19 pandemic affected consumers’ access to oral health care. This study evaluated factors associated with teledentistry use among US adults from June 2019 through June 2020.

This research brief examines the impact of COVID-19 on undergraduate medical education and on RN education from the start of the pandemic up to the present. However, it is likely that other health profession education programs that rely on clinical training for their students were also affected.

We compared the representation of the four largest Latino subpopulation groups in the health workforce with that group’s representation in the US workforce, using 2016–20 data. Mexican Americans were the most underrepresented subpopulation in professions requiring advanced degrees. All groups were overrepresented in occupations requiring less than a bachelor’s degree. Among recent health professions graduates, overall Latino representation has been increasing over time.

The purpose of this study was to identify barriers to oral health services experienced by children and evaluate variation across demographic and socioeconomic population groups.

The objective of this research was to describe the challenges posed by the pandemic on the ability of safety-net providers to deliver oral health care to underserved communities and to identify strategies that enabled care delivery during recent years but especially during the initial challenging months of 2020.

The 2023 HWRCs’ Annual Report captures all of the HRSA-sponsored work conducted by the HWRCs throughout the past year. Topics include COVID-19, burnout, telehealth, health equity, health professions education, and more! This year’s report also introduces 2 new HWRCs: the UNC Behavioral Health Workforce Research Center and the Consortium for Workforce Research in Public Health.

This tutorial uses distributions of mental health related 911 calls in New York City to demonstrate how to utilize ArcGIS and Geoda to conduct an Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis (ESDA).

Dr. Patricia Benner and colleagues’ published book Educating Nurses: A Call For Radical Transformation shares results of a multi-year study investigating nursing education and describes needed changes and specific recommendations for the nursing education community. HealthImpact has partnered with Dr. Benner to create the Clinical Faculty and Education Certificate Program, to help clinical faculty and educators transform their teaching practices. This virtual meeting will review these strategies to help better prepare the next generation of nursing professionals. Come prepared to share your own experiences and perspectives during this event.

Our recent virtual meeting Interprofessional Simulation: Communication Is Key is now available for viewing on demand. During this interactive discussion, Dr. Briese discussed the process of designing and running an interprofessional simulation-based learning experience (SBLE) aimed at facilitating communication between long-term care, emergency medical services (EMS), and emergency department (ED) healthcare providers.

In this second video in our HWTAC Dissemination Video Series, learn why infographics are an important communication tool to help your research reach a broader audience. We’ll also take you step by step through the process of selecting content, creating data visualizations, and organizing your layout. This is follow-up to Video 1: “How to Condense Research Findings”: https://www.healthworkforceta.org/media-library/how-to-condense-research-findings/

There has been growing interest in recent years about doula care and its role in addressing racial disparities in maternal health. Over half of the states in the US are currently exploring or in the process of implementing Medicaid coverage for doula care. During this virtual meeting our panel of experts answered audience questions about the birth doula workforce.

Little research has compared the demographic and practice characteristics of registered nurses (RNs) who work in public health (PH RNs) with other RNs and advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs) who work in public health (PH APRNs) with other APRNs. We examined differences in characteristics between PH RNs and other RNs and between PH APRNs and other APRNs.

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) created the Physician and Physician Practice Research Database (3P-RD) which captures census data of physicians and physician practices in 13 states, including characteristics that may be useful for analytic purposes. This webinar describes how these databases were built and how to gain access to them for your research purposes. This webinar was cosponsored by HWTAC and AcademyHealth’s Health Workforce Interest Group.

In times of heightened population health needs, the health workforce must respond quickly and efficiently, especially at the state level. We examined state governors' executive orders related to 2 key health workforce flexibility issues, scope of practice (SOP) and licensing, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The objective of this study was to develop a diversity index (DI) comparing the diversity of graduates across public health schools and programs in the United States and to examine characteristics associated with institutions’ graduate diversity.

This is the U.S. Medicaid Primary Care Workforce Tracker. The Medicaid Primary Care Workforce Tracker is an interactive map that allows you to examine and visualize the primary care workforce providing health care to individuals with Medicaid.

The Drug Addiction Treatment Act (DATA) of 2000 created a pathway for clinicians to obtain waivers (“DATA waivers”) to treat patients with opioid use disorder (OUD) outside of an opioid treatment program, provided the clinicians met certification and training requirements. Prior research mainly relies on DATA-waiver status or prescription data alone to estimate the workforce, likely leading to overestimates. This article examines trends in DATA-waivered clinicians’ active participation in prescribing buprenorphine, overall and by patient limits, between January 2017 and May 2021.

This study lays the foundations for using T-MSIS data to identify communities at the highest risk for access barriers and support targeted policy responses.

Health centers serve millions of patients with limited English proficiency (LEP) through highly variable language services programs that reflect patient language preferences, the availability of bilingual staff, and very limited sources of third-party funding for interpreters. We conducted a mixed-methods study to understand interpreter services delivery in federally qualified health centers during 2009–2019.

While several studies have documented the rapid growth in telehealth visits during the pandemic, none have examined its relationship with greater overall access to care among vulnerable populations. We use Association of American Medical Colleges' Consumer Survey data to examine the relationship between access to care and telehealth use before and during the pandemic.

Many medical education programs have recognized the need to promote social mission goals to help ensure that students graduate with the skills they need to promote health equity in their communities. However, little research has been done that explores how these institutions make social mission a part of their accreditation standards. This article describes a study that analyzed accreditation standards from institutions across multiple health disciplines to examine how these standards discussed social mission.

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 administrative claims data from New York (NY) and Oregon (OR) (2014-2016) to examine opioid Rxs associated with nonsurgical dental visits.

The aim of this study was to examine changing trends in post-baccalaureate programs available to pre-dental students and to assess the role these programs play in improving oral health workforce diversity.

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 the dental specialties and the predictors of URM dentist specialization.

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.

Currently, 13 states and tribal nations have expanded their dental workforce by adopting use of dental therapists. To date, there has been no evaluation of the influence of this policy on dental care use. This study assesses changes in dental care use in Minnesota after the implementation of the policy to authorize dental therapists in 2009.

Dental therapy is a workforce model that introduces mid-level practitioners—dental therapists—with both preventive and restorative skills. The introduction of dental therapists appears to improve access to and equity in dental service delivery in the US. The Oral Health Workforce Research Center conducted a study that evaluated the satisfaction of clinical providers, organizational administrators, and patients with the dental therapy workforce at Apple Tree Dental in Minnesota, the first US state to authorize dental therapy practice statewide. This report describes the results from 2 surveys on the dental therapy workforce at Apple Tree Dental’s centers and programs: 1) clinician and administration satisfaction and 2) patient satisfaction with their clinical providers, making comparisons across provider type.

This report reviews the use of teledentistry following the COVID-19 pandemic in 4 states—California, Maine, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—and the supports needed to enhance dental care in a post-COVID-19 world.

This study examines the individual, educational, and policy factors that predict dentists pursuing postgraduate dental (PGD) training.

Postgraduate dental (PGD) primary care training has grown significantly. This study examines the individual, educational, community, and policy factors that predict practice patterns of PGD-trained dentists.

This infographic describes the satisfaction of clinical providers, organizational administrators, and patients with the dental therapy workforce at Apple Tree Dental in Minnesota, the first US state to authorize dental therapy practice statewide.

In this video Komal Kochhar, MBBS, MHA, discusses the resident exit survey at the Indiana State University of Medicine.

In this video Ed Salsberg, MPA, FAAN, provides an overview of the exit survey process.

A key goal of health reform in the US is to improve population health through expanded access to health insurance. Demand for high-quality, cost-effective, basic health services is anticipated to grow, particularly for underserved populations. However, there is also growing concern about the impact of health professions scope of practice on access, quality, and cost of health services. Since health professions regulation falls under state jurisdiction, the legal scope of practice for a health profession is typically defined in a state-specific scope of practice act. These acts describe the services that professionals can provide and under what conditions they can be provided. Scope of practice acts also define the requirements for education and training, certification and licensure, and supervision. Restrictive legal scopes of practice often serve as a barrier to effective and efficient delivery of health services.

The State Health Workforce Data Collection Inventory describes findings from a survey about data collection on health workforce supply (e.g., demographic, education, and practice characteristics of health professionals), demand (e.g., vacancies and employer recruitment and retention difficulties), and the education pipeline (e.g., graduation rates and trainee/graduate characteristics). The data collection survey is ongoing and the inventory is continually being updated as more responses are received.

The 2022 HWRCs’ Annual Report captures all of the HRSA-sponsored work conducted by the HWRCs throughout the past year. Topics include COVID-19, burnout, telehealth, health equity, and more! This year the report also includes a “Study Highlights” section that features an especially relevant or well received research project from each center.

This compendium provides a summary of 45 federal data sources that can be used to support health workforce analysis. The compendium was prepared by the Health Resources and Services Administration’s National Center for Health Workforce Analysis (NCHWA) and the Health Workforce Technical Assistance Center (HWTAC). 

This chartbook uses data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) to describe education program outcomes for 32 health professions between the years 2011 and 2020. It contains information on the number of awards conferred and the gender and race/ethnicity of individuals completing the programs. 

There is variation in nursing education quality, measured as first-time NCLEX (National Council Licensure Examination)-RN pass rates (FTPR), both across and within the United States. Current research examines program-level characteristics associated with performance. This study examines state-level policies and their relationship to FTPR (both associate and baccalaureate nursing degrees) to identify policies that enhance nursing program quality.

To assess racial and ethnic diversity of graduates of each dental school compared to the diversity of populations they draw from and to assess changes over time nationally and by school.

Primary care providers are less likely to accept Medicaid compared to other kinds of insurance. The medical school a primary care provider chooses to attend has been shown to impact other elements of their practice, but the impact on Medicaid participation is not well understood. This abstract describes a study that analyzed 2016 Medicaid claims data to examine how different medical schools affected primary care graduate level of Medicaid participation.

Social mission efforts in health professions education are helping to better prepare graduates with skills to address societal needs. These efforts are designed to strategically increase health equity and address health disparities. This article provides an overview of the social mission research landscape and discusses critical evidence gaps.

To prepare new graduate nurse practitioners (NPs) for transition to practice, postgraduate residency or fellowship programs have been spreading across the nation in the past decade.