News Release

UNC “Jobs to Careers” Project Generates Critical Impact Award

May 19 , 2010

The Jobs to Careers: Promoting Work-Based Learning for Quality Care program was recently recognized when the program’s funding foundations received the Critical Impact Award during the annual conference of the Council on Foundations. UNC plays a vital role in this program as the national evaluation team for the program. The award was presented to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and The Hitachi Foundation who collaborated on the launch and support of the national Jobs to Careers program that addresses the needs of low wage health care workers while inspiring innovations in job training, career advancement and health care delivery. The program creates systems to advance and reward the skill and career development of frontline health and health care workers.

UNC’s Jobs to Careers Evaluation Project evaluates grantee demonstration projects participating in the program. The evaluation program is a joint project between the UNC Institute on Aging (IOA) and the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research. The program is housed at the IOA as part of the Program on the Care of the Aging.

"The UNC Evaluation Team is proud to be a part of this valuable effort. We would like to congratulate the foundations on this award and the grantee sites and National Program Office - Jobs for the Future - on all their hard work on behalf of frontline workers in health and healthcare," stated Jennifer Craft Morgan, IOA Associate Director of Research and lead principal investigator of the program.

Nationally, more than six million people work in frontline occupations. Collectively this segment is growing faster (32.6 percent) than the growth rate of all health and health care occupations (28.3 percent), and significantly faster than the growth rate for all occupations (14.8 percent) in the United States workforce, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. One-third of frontline workers are part of a racial minority (18 percent African American, 10 percent Hispanic and 4 percent Asian) and 79 percent of the workforce is female. Their ranks include but are not limited to medical assistants, health educators, laboratory technicians, substance abuse counselors, and home health aides.

Jobs to Careers’ grantee projects have produced returns for employers and created career path opportunities for an estimated 726 workers over the past four years.