Expansion of CPCA’s Workforce Activities
CPCA committed to prioritizing workforce development as a core pillar of its strategic plan in 2016 and continues to live out this commitment every day. We dive deeper and deeper into the work to expand our scope and understanding. Through numerous conversations with community health center (CHC) leaders and partners, one thing is clear – the workforce shortages impact every discipline and almost every profession. As such, CPCA expanded its workforce activities over the years beyond the primary care workforce to also include behavioral health, oral health, and allied health staff at CHCs.
We recognize the importance of building the entire care team to provide the right care, at the right time, at the right place, and with the right people. Just as CHC care teams have a shared responsibility to care for a patient, CPCA also leverages a shared responsibility with multiple departments and staff to address the large workforce shortages across our state. Through this combined CPCA effort, several new and innovative projects have been developed. Included below are some of the most recent multidisciplinary workforce activities in the last year.
FY 2022-2023 Budget Advocacy: CaliforniaHealth+ Advocates advocated to the Governor and the Legislature for $51 million state allocation in the FY 22-23 California State Budget. This multi-pronged proposal was designed to benefit various types of health professions across several disciplines by focusing on scholarships, loan repayment, advanced practice clinician training, and graduate medical education.
Health Professions Education & Training Initiative: CPCA is expanding its Health Professions Education & Training (HP-ET) Initiative and has created several resources that focus on each discipline. For example, we created program highlights and promising practices resources on behavioral health, oral health, and allied health to assist CHCs in developing and enhancing their HP-ET partnerships. Two Promising Practices resources focused on: 1) preceptor training and 2) affiliation agreements developed through feedback from multiple CHC organizations across California. Three Program Highlights resources showcase innovative dental assistant and behavioral health programs that CHCs have developed to “grow their own” workforce.
Training and Technical Assistance: CPCA’s webinars also reflect attention to the behavioral and oral health workforce. On July 7, 2021, CPCA held a webinar on Exploring the Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner Role in Health Centers. Partners at the University of California (UC) Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner Online Certificate Program shared how health centers can leverage this new online program to grow their behavioral and primary care health workforce. CPCA also held another webinar on June 7, 2022 for Developing MSW Field Education Partnerships. In this webinar, the California Social Work Education Center (CalSWEC) provided an overview of a new CHC toolkit for developing MSW field education programs and La Clínica de La Raza shared their experience operating a MSW program. In addition, CPCA hosted a webinar on May 25, 2022 in partnership with the National Network for Oral Health Access (NNOHA) on Recruiting Dental Assistants: Best Practices and Considerations. Findings from NNOHA's 2021 workforce survey were shared, as well as a review of best practices on staff recruitment and retention strategies.
Research & Data Analysis: CPCA recognizes the value of making data-informed decisions; therefore, has collected new information to refine its workforce strategy. For example, the 2021 CPCA Compensation & Benefits Survey included new staff ratios for the oral and allied health workforce. In addition, CPCA conducted landscape analysis in Summer 2022 of the oral health workforce landscape with the goal of assessing CHC interest in dental therapists. Initial findings indicate that immediate needs are focused on recruiting and retaining dental assistants. CPCA will continue to identify training opportunities to provide career growth for dental assistants to increase retention, as well as engage with other oral health stakeholders to identify strategic opportunities to expand dental workforce capacity at CHCs.