News Release

UNC Institute on Aging and Sheps Center Awarded Grant to Evaluate the National Jobs to Careers Program for Frontline Health Care Workers

November 13, 2006

Chapel Hill, NC - The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) recently awarded researchers at The University of North Carolina Institute on Aging (IOA), and Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research, a $1,036,019 grant to evaluate grantee demonstration projects participating in the Jobs to Careers: Promoting Work-Based Learning for Quality Care program. Jobs to Careers is a national initiative of RWJF in collaboration with the Hitachi Foundation.

The foundations are providing support to nine partnerships of employers and educational institutions to advance and reward the skill and career development of frontline workers. The evaluation program will be a joint project for the IOA and the Sheps Center, led by Co-Principal Investigators Jennifer Craft Morgan, Ph.D. and Thomas R. Konrad, Ph.D. and will be housed at the IOA.

Jobs to Careers seeks to establish systems that train, develop, reward, and advance current frontline health and health care workers to improve the quality of care and ensure the quality of services provided to patients and communities. These frontline workers-4.7 million of them in the United States-provide their patients and clients with preventive and early intervention services, chronic illness management strategies, and long-term and post-hospitalization rehabilitative care. Yet despite their critical and growing responsibilities, few earn enough to support a family, and their lack of access to training and credentials compounds the limits on their opportunities to advance.

Morgan noted, "Frontline workers are particularly vulnerable in the health care system, and their jobs are characterized by heavy workloads, low pay, and few benefits. Job turnover tends to be high, and efforts to improve this work by creating more stable and better-prepared workforce are crucial as our health care system faces rising demand from an aging population."

The nine Jobs to Careers demonstration sites are broad-based local partnerships comprised of health or health care employers, educational institutions, and other community organizations. The partnerships are part of an overall effort to develop and redesign systems that support and institutionalize learning and career advancement for frontline workers; additionally, it will test new models of work-based learning.

The UNC evaluation project will analyze the implementation of these projects, as well as their outcomes. The evaluation is part of the IOA program on Care of the Aging, which has previously conducted its own intervention in North Carolina nursing homes to improve nursing assistant jobs (the Workforce Improvement for Nursing Assistants program, WIN A STEP UP, also under the direction of Konrad and Morgan).

Konrad noted, "This is an exciting opportunity to learn more about the partnerships and systems that need to work together in order to improve the situation of frontline workers. We will try to find out what works, what doesn't, and how future partnerships between employers-educational institutions can most effectively improve opportunities for these workers who form the foundation of our health care system."

About RWJF: The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation focuses on the pressing health and health care issues facing our country. As the nation's largest philanthropy devoted exclusively to improving the health and health care of all Americans, the Foundation works with a diverse group of organizations and individuals to identify solutions and achieve comprehensive, meaningful, and timely change. For more than 30 years the Foundation has brought experience, commitment, and a rigorous, balanced approach to the problems that affect the health and health care of those it serves. When it comes to helping Americans lead healthier lives and get the care they need, the Foundation expects to make a difference in your lifetime.

About The Hitachi Foundation: The Foundation's broad purpose is to enhance the wellbeing of economically and socially isolated people throughout the United States. At its core, the Foundation is a learning organization, committed to investments that enhance what we can learn, especially about the wide range of issues captured by the terms corporate citizenship and Corporate Social Responsibility - business ethics, corporate philanthropy, and government governance.

About the IOA: The Institute On Aging is an inter-institutional program of the University of North Carolina with a mission to enhance the well-being of older people by fostering statewide collaboration in research, education, and service. Its areas of research focus include the aging workforce and retirement, healthy aging, the long term care workforce, community and aging, and diversity and aging issues.

About the Sheps Center: The Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research seeks to improve the health of individuals, families, and populations by understanding the problems, issues, and alternatives in the design and delivery of health care services. This is accomplished through an interdisciplinary program of research, consultation, technical assistance, and training that focuses on timely and policy-relevant questions concerning the accessibility, adequacy, organization, cost, and effectiveness of health care services and the dissemination of this information to policy makers and the general public.

For further information, please contact Jennifer Craft Morgan, PhD, Associate Director of Research at the UNC Institute on Aging: phone 919-966-0225.