Topics for Study

The Human Capital team works to attract, develop and retain a capable and diverse health care workforce to improve the health and health care of all Americans. The Human Capital team is interested in understanding the future of the health care workforce and methods to increase diversity within the field.  There are four areas of inquiry that would expand knowledge in the efforts of this team.

To provide a clear focus for applicants to The New Connections Initiative, each programming team was asked to develop specific research projects or questions that would help inform their strategies and grant making. These specific questions are described below. Applicants are asked to submit proposals for one of the topics described below.

Please note that not all teams have research questions at this time and the detail provided below by each team varies according to each team's needs and interests. Finally, some of the research questions will be more suitable for Junior Investigators and other questions will be more suitable for Senior Consultants. Thus, applicants should consider the following guidelines.

Senior Consultants
Projects that are more qualitative and can yield recommendations and products for the team should be answered by a senior consultant. Senior Consultants should refer to the examples of activities, potential products and deliverables that could be conducted included on page 2 of the Letter of Invitation.

Junior Investigators
Questions that would be more suitable for secondary analysis should be answered by a Junior Investigator. When responding to this solicitation, Junior Investigators must indicate how they will incorporate the secondary datasets when responding to research questions. Junior Investigators should provide a description of the data and rationale for its appropriateness given the research question.  Junior Investigators are responsible for identifying and acquiring the dataset.

Junior Investigators or Senior Consultants must respond to one of the following questions:


1. The Human Capital team is interested in increasing under-represented minorities in the health and health care workforce:
 
a. Do participants in education pipeline programs gain advantages outside of simply enrolling in the health professions? e.g. increased social networks, enrollment in other health professions (not just the targeted profession)
 
b. Can health and healthcare employers significantly broaden the diversity of their workforce by supporting the career development of frontline workers?

2. The Human Capital team is interested in learning about the nature and extent of quality improvement training programs for health care professionals.

Continuous Quality Improvement ( CQI ) is the process-based, data-driven approach to improving the quality of a product or service. It operates under the belief that there is always room for improving operations, processes and activities to increase quality.

a. To what extent are healthcare organizations providing CQI/Quality Improvement education to staff?  
 
b. What hospital characteristics correlate with investments in CQI/QI educational offerings for hospital clinical staff?

3.  The Human Capital team would like to explore the role of nursing and the nursing health care workforce.
 
a. What are the obstacles and facilitators to enrolling a more racially diverse population of students into nursing?

b. How will the projected need for nurse faculty at associate, baccalaureate, diploma and on line programs need to change in the next ten years, given the future demands for nurses?

c. What are the obstacles and facilitators to keeping racially diverse nurses in the profession?

d. Where do applicants go who get turned down from nursing programs?

4. Emerging or new professions in health and health care.

a. What new roles/professions might emerge for health and health care workers 15–20 years in the future? Identify factors that may lead to these changing roles.

b. What are the implications of changes in the structure of health care delivery, such as the decentralization of specialty care, on the health care workforce?

c. How may evolving roles of workforce other industries (e.g., automobile, technology, social services, education) provide lessons for the health care workforce?