Job creation is a national priority, and health care is a high-demand and expanding segment of the economy. That combination makes this a strategic moment for creating and implementing innovative skill-development strategies that meet the needs of health care providers and workers. With more effective skill-development strategies, low-wage workers on the front lines of health care can advance to higher-skilled, family-sustaining careers, while health care providers can build and retain robust, well-prepared, and engaged workforces.

These principles drive a number of JFF initiatives in health care, all of which take a three-pronged approach to strengthening skills. One, JFF helps employers grow their own quality workforces with “learner-friendly” workplaces. Two, we help educational institutions develop “worker-friendly” learning methods, leading to postsecondary credentials that are valued by employers. Three, we build partnerships among employers, educational institutions, and others who play a role in creating high-quality health care workforces.

In this Newswire, we highlight Jobs to Careers, a national initiative that is developing the skills and career paths of workers on the front lines of health care.

—Marlene B. Seltzer, President and CEO, Jobs for the Future

Community colleges are essential providers of education and skills training for frontline health care workers, who are overwhelmingly low-income women from minority backgrounds and who face many obstacles to advancement. Recognizing the need for new education models, community colleges have joined with health care employers in Jobs to Careers to change the way frontline workers are trained, rewarded, and advanced in their careers. O. Steven Quimby and Kimberly R. Rogers report on how colleges are infusing work-based learning into health care training.

Better care results when frontline workers have ongoing opportunities to learn skills and advance along career paths, but providing such opportunities requires a commitment from employers beyond investing in individual workers and their training. It takes the efforts of an entire organization to raise the quality of its frontline workforce. In this Jobs to Careers practice brief, Charles Goldberg and Randall Wilson examine the diverse roles that supervisors play in professional development for frontline workers.

Through interviews with three workers, this video from The Hitachi Foundation tells how Jobs to Careers helps a Portland, Oregon, assisted living facility advance its staff and provide better care to its residents.

State regulations protect the public interest, yet rule-making also can impose unintended barriers to innovation. Danielle Head and Rebecca Starr explore how a Jobs to Careers project in Kentucky has addressed such barriers as it implemented work-based learning to advance the careers of frontline employees.

Better care results when frontline workers have ongoing opportunities to learn skills and advance along career paths, but providing such opportunities requires a commitment from employers beyond investing in individual workers and their training. It takes the efforts of an entire organization to raise the quality of its frontline workforce. In this Jobs to Careers practice brief, Charles Goldberg and Randall Wilson examine the diverse roles that supervisors play in professional development for frontline workers.

Innovations in Labor Market Intelligence, by Robert Holm, Terri Lee Bergman, and Heath Prince, examines the creative development, application, and integration of labor market research in strategic thinking and decision making. The effectiveness of these collaborative processes depends on engaging not only intelligence suppliers but also decision makers who use the information. Alignment between data producers and users is critical to being agile in responding to rapidly changing labor market dynamics. This report was prepared for JFF’s Regional Growth and Opportunity Initiative.

As workforce intermediaries respond to dramatic changes in the U.S. labor market, community colleges are expanding their roles in workforce development and, in the process, often taking on many of the functions of intermediaries. JFF reviewed the growing literature on intermediaries in several settings, including community colleges. This brief by John Hoops and Randall Wilson summarizes the findings on the key functions and characteristics of effective workforce intermediaries and highlights the emerging intermediary roles being played by community colleges.

The National Fund for Workforce Solutions has received a two-year $7.7 million grant from the Corporation for National and Community Services under its Social Innovation Fund. Partnering with JFF and collaborating with 9 national and 200 local and regional funders, the National Fund for Workforce Solutions will expand its assistance to at least 23,000 additional workers and job seekers in 24 high-need communities, while addressing the skill needs of more than 1,000 employers.