Joint Health Care and Workforce Development & Education Task Force

The Health Care and Workforce Development and Education Task Forces joined together on April 24th to host a discussion with UC Berkeley professor Jeff Oxendine. The presentation centered on the recently released California Future health Workforce Commission Final Report (Mr. Oxendine served as staff to the commission). The report (available here) looked at the interdependent influences on health and their implications for the future health workforce and resulted in ten priority recommendations. According to the report, if all the priority recommendations were implemented the state would see a significant increase in health workers (many of which would be from underrepresented communities), and a decrease in the primary care doctor and psychiatrist shortage. The group engaged in thoughtful discussion around the recommendations and will likely continue to discuss how the EBLC can support this broad effort within our region.

During this joint meeting, the two Task Forces also discussed SB 2, legislation introduced by Senator Glazer to create a Statewide Longitudinal Student Database. The group recommended that the EBLC Board of Directors formally support SB 2.