Pitt Business e-newsletter Issue 10, July 2008
New Center Aims to Address Opportunities and Challenges for Health Care Workers
Seven of the ten fastest growing occupations in the United States are health and/or care professions. Due in part to this growing demand, there are persistent recruiting difficulties for care workers in a variety of occupational categories (e.g., nurses, home health workers, childcare workers, and some physician specialties). The problem of job vacancies is compounded by high turnover in many direct care professions, with dramatic and negative consequences for consumers of these services, the workers themselves, the organizations that employ them, and society as a whole.
The newly founded Center for Health and Care Work (CHCW)—directed by Carrie Leana, the George H. Love Professor of Organizations and Management in the Katz School—seeks to inform the larger national discourse centered on how to better legitimize, compensate, develop, and regulate direct care work in health care and other industries. The center will encourage interdisciplinary research and innovation to influence scholarship, policy, and practice. The four-fold mission of the CHCW is to (1) facilitate interdisciplinary research to address economic and workforce opportunities in the direct-care sectors; (2) heighten the profile of the research on health care and other care work that is currently being conducted at the University of Pittsburgh; (3) demonstrate an institutional commitment to such research, enhancing the University's attractiveness for investment by outside funders; and (4) facilitate development of training programs and executive education that can apply the research findings of the center.
The center is a partnership between the Katz School and the School of Medicine. Jules Rosen, MD, a professor of psychiatry in the Pitt School of Medicine, is codirector of the CHCW.
Among the questions the CHCW will address through the research it facilitates are:
- How will changes in the demand and delivery of health care services affect the quality of care provided?
- How can the problems of low-wage, low-skill workers in direct care be more effectively addressed?
- How do public policy initiatives regarding immigration affect opportunities in the direct care workforce?
- How can the professionals who form the basis of a dynamic and competitive economy be developed and retained?
The center will address a broad array of issues and constituents. "Enhancing the quality, size, and stability of the health and care workforces touches on many of the central economic and social issues of our time, including offshoring, immigration, shared prosperity, and reducing the ranks of the working poor," Leana said.
The center is one of several new initiatives in the health care arena spearheaded by Leana, who holds secondary appointments in the University's School of Medicine and Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. She is the founder of the Katz-UPMC Physician Leadership Program and the academic director of the Katz School's new Executive MBA Program for Physicians (EMBA-MD).
For more information about the CHCW, contact Deana D'Atri at 412-648-7812 or dmdatri@katz.pitt.edu.
