Dataset Information

Positioning the Health Services Research Workforce for Continued Success: Recommendations from AcademyHealth Stakeholders.

ABSTRACT: AcademyHealth established a Workforce Initiative Task Force in 2016 to conduct an assessment of the state of the health services research workforce and develop recommendations for its future in the context of the changing health care and research ecosystems. This assessment included four components: a series of commissioned papers, an online priority setting process, a multistakeholder summit, and final analysis by the AcademyHealth Education Council. This paper presents this process and the resultant list of prioritized recommendations and planned next steps.

SUBMITTER: Menachemi N

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6149359 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Positioning the Health Services Research Workforce for Continued Success: Recommendations from AcademyHealth Stakeholders.

Menachemi Nir N Simpson Lisa A LA Wolfe Meghan J MJ

Health services research 20181001

AcademyHealth established a Workforce Initiative Task Force in 2016 to conduct an assessment of the state of the health services research workforce and develop recommendations for its future in the context of the changing health care and research ecosystems. This assessment included four components: a series of commissioned papers, an online priority setting process, a multistakeholder summit, and final analysis by the AcademyHealth Education Council. This paper presents this process and the res ...[more]

PMID: 30240007

Similar Datasets

Project description:ObjectiveTo investigate how the health services research (HSR) workforce supply in the United States has evolved over the last 5 years.Data sourcesMembership data of AcademyHealth participants, professional networking websites, PubMed, grant databases, and the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System.Study designDescriptive study comparing size and characteristics of the HSR workforce and graduates identified across multiple data sources. Lists of authors and principal investigators (PIs) were merged and de-duplicated to identify unique counts. Pearson's chi-squared test was used to compare characteristics between members and nonmembers of AcademyHealth.Data collectionDownloaded files from websites and received survey data extracted by AcademyHealth between 2016 and 2020.Principal findingsThe workforce size ranged from 9610 to 28,136, depending on data source. Common employers included universities, government settings, and health systems. Little overlap in employers existed for individuals with potentially competing skill sets. The HSR workforce appeared more diverse than the US adult population, with two to three times greater representation among Asian individuals yet lower representation among Black/African American (30%) and Hispanic (75%) individuals compared with the US population. Exactly 87,721 master's and 3105 doctoral degree graduates from core HSR fields were added over 5 years from public and not-for-profit institutions. Including for-profit institution graduates increased the count by 15% for master's and 30% for doctoral graduates. Hispanic (any race), Black/African American, and multiracial individuals gained representation among core HSR graduates, with for-profit institutions substantially contributing to the number of Black/African American graduates.ConclusionsThe HSR workforce is growing with increasing diversity among its graduates compared with previous studies. Additional work is needed to understand how employers value the contributions of those trained in HSR. Continued efforts are needed to ensure HSR workforce diversity to frame critical research questions and develop programs and policies that reflect the needs of the community.

Project description:IntroductionThe single biggest barrier for countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) to scale up the necessary health services for addressing the three health-related Millennium Development Goals and achieving Universal Health Coverage is the lack of an adequate and well-performing health workforce. This deficit needs to be addressed both by training more new health personnel and by improving the performance of the existing and future health workforce. However, efforts have mostly been focused on training new staff and less on improving the performance of the existing health workforce. The purpose of this paper is to disseminate the protocol for the PERFORM project and reflect on the key challenges encountered during the development of this methodology and how they are being overcome.MethodsThe overall aim of the PERFORM project is to identify ways of strengthening district management in order to address health workforce inadequacies by improving health workforce performance in SSA. The study will take place in three districts each in Ghana, Tanzania and Uganda using an action research approach. With the support of the country research teams, the district health management teams (DHMTs) will lead on planning, implementation, observation, reflection and redefinition of the activities in the study. Taking into account the national and local human resource (HR) and health systems (HS) policies and practices already in place, 'bundles' of HR/HS strategies that are feasible within the context and affordable within the districts' budget will be developed by the DHMTs to strengthen priority areas of health workforce performance. A comparative analysis of the findings from the three districts in each country will add new knowledge on the effects of these HR/HS bundles on DHMT management and workforce performance and the impact of an action research approach on improving the effectiveness of the DHMTs in implementing these interventions.DiscussionDifferent challenges were faced during the development of the methodology. These include the changing context in the study districts, competing with other projects and duties for the time of district managers, complexity of the study design, maintaining the anonymity and confidentiality of study participants as well as how to record the processes during the study. We also discuss how these challenges are being addressed. The dissemination of this research protocol is intended to generate interest in the PERFORM project and also stimulate discussion on the use of action research in complex studies such as this on strengthening district health management to improve health workforce performance.

Dataset Information

Positioning the Health Services Research Workforce for Continued Success: Recommendations from AcademyHealth Stakeholders.

Publications

Positioning the Health Services Research Workforce for Continued Success: Recommendations from AcademyHealth Stakeholders.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets