THEME 1 - LECTURE 1:
Strategies To Enhance The Diversity Of The Health Professionals Workforce:
National And State Initiatives
The California Workforce Initiative at the UCSF Center for the Health
Professions
A project jointly funded by the California HealthCare Foundation and The
California Endowment
Initiative Summary
Health care continues its evolution toward more consolidated, integrated
and managed systems of care. As it does, these changes have a profound
impact upon, and are limited by, the 10.5 million health care workers
whose labor costs account for almost 70% of health care expenditures.
Issues such as physician unionization, nurse staffing, allied health flexibility,
and public expectation of core competence are an important part of the
story of change in health care. In general, issues such as the size and
availability of professional groups, their skill base and practice patterns
and regulations all serve as limitations on the rate of change in health
care. As California is in the forefront of the health care changes, it
also is, and will continue to be, a crucible for many of these health
workforce issues.
To address the broad concerns of change for health professionals and
workers, the Center for the Health Professions at the University of California,
San Francisco, in partnerships with the California Healthcare Foundation
and The California Endowment, has created the California Workforce Initiative
(CWI). The CWI builds off the Center's existing national programs to develop
and sustain a vital and dynamic resource to promote, support and advance
change within the California health care workforce. Specifically, the
CWI addresses these core issues:
- Supply and distribution of professionals;
- Diversity of health professionals;
- Skill base of the health professionals;
- Regulation of health workers;
- Utilization of health care workforce;
- Consumer and public understanding of health workforce;
- Health care workers in transition.
The Initiative administers several unique programs to address the above
issues:
- CWI Program Office. Coordinating CWI programs; running
resource center; managing projects; researching future programs;
- Allied & Auxiliary Health Care Workforce. Developing
programs and resources to address challenges, opportunities and risks
faced by allied and auxiliary workers, employers, educators, policy
makers and consumers;
- The Network: A Collaboration to Improve Medical Health Education
and Health Care. Developing and disseminating curricula and other
resources on best practices for training physicians in high quality,
cost effective medical care that makes use of information technologies;
- Diversifying California's Nursing Workforce. Developing
partnerships and policies for educational and career ladders for health
care employees to move into nursing;
- Meeting California's Nursing Needs. Documenting major nursing
workforce challenges and identifying options to meet them;
- The Practice of Medicine in California. Researching experiences
of California physicians;
- Community-Based Health Care Leadership Networks. Designing
and piloting a program to meet leadership needs of community members.
Bram Briggance joined the California Workforce
Initiative in February 2000. As Associate Director his work involves the
establishment of the Initiative's resource center, and the dissemination
of information regarding the CWI's research projects and results. He also
assists Catherine Dower, the CWI's Program Director in the management,
coordination and execution of the Initiative's activities. Bram received
his BA for Denison University, his MA for the State University of New
York at Stony Brook, and is presently a PhD candidate in the Department
of Philosophy at SUNY, Stony Brook. Bram is a native of Michigan and moved
to the Bay Area from New York, where he was a university instructor.
Bram Briggance
UCSF Center for the Health Professions
3333 California Street, Suite 410
San Francisco, CA 94118
Voice: (415) 476-8181
Fax: (415) 476-4113
http://futurehealth.ucsf.edu
Vanessa Northington Gamble, MD, PhD became Vice
President of the Division of Community and Minority Programs at the Association
of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) in January 2000. At the AAMC she leads
activities in diversity in the medical workforce, cultural competence,
and public health. Before joining the AAMC, Dr. Gamble was Director of
the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in Medicine and Associate
Professor of History of Medicine and Family Medicine at the University
of Wisconsin School of Medicine. She was the first black woman tenured
at the medical school. A native West Philadelphian, Dr. Gamble received
her B.A. from Hampshire College and her M.D., and PhD in the History and
Sociology of Science from the University of Pennsylvania. She is an internationally
recognized expert on the history of race and racism in American medicine.
Her book, Making a Place for Ourselves: The Black Hospital Movement,
1920-1945 was named an outstanding academic book by Choice, the
journal of academic librarians. Dr. Gamble recently received a Robert
Wood Johnson Foundation Health Investigator Award to write a book of essays
on race and racism in American medicine. She is also conducting research
on the history of black women physicians.
Dr. Gamble has served as a consultant or committee member for numerous
organizations, including the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the Agency for
Healthcare Research and Quality, the Institute of Medicine, the National
Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
American Foundation for AIDS Research, the American Association for the
History of Medicine, and the Reproductive Health Technologies Project.
She has also served as chair of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study Legacy Committee.
This committee took a lead role in the successful campaign to obtain a
presidential apology for the syphilis study.
Vanessa Northington Gamble, MD, PhD
Vice President for Community and Minority Programs
Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC)
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