Current Healthcare Workforce Initiatives
Current healthcare workforce initiatives are ongoing programs and strategies that address healthcare workforce challenges by improving training, promoting diversity, and aligning with emerging healthcare trends to ensure the delivery of high-quality healthcare services.
The Collaborative empowers health leaders, professionals, and key stakeholders to collaborate and transform health workplaces and systems through a culture of wellbeing and equity.
The Arizona Nurse Education Investment Pilot Program, managed by ADHS, aims to boost nursing education program capacity in the state, covering NA, LPN, RN, and APRN levels. The funds are directed to universities and community colleges for faculty expenses and capital investments.
The Nurse Clinical Rotation and Licensed Nurse Training Program is aimed at student nurse clinical rotations, preceptor programs, and specialty nursing skills programs. With the goal of increasing the number of preceptors available for nursing school students, and creating additional residency programs and advanced practice programs.
The Statewide RN Transition to Practice Program provides support for new graduate nurses and their preceptors for one year. The programs goal is to provide support for new nurse graduates and decrease turnover rates.
The State of Arizona Grant Program for Preceptors of Healthcare Graduate Students is a grant program for Arizona University preceptors. The program aims to incentivize volunteer preceptors to continue to precept graduate students and provide key learning experiences for these students.
The expansion of the Behavioral Health Workforce Training Program aims to support behavioral health curriculum and pay for salaries, benefits, training, related expenses, and operational costs necessary to increase the number of qualified behavioral health education faculty.
The Arizona Department of Health Services has provided grant funds to five nursing programs to be used for scholarships. These programs are designed for students to complete a bachelor's or master's nursing degree in 12-18 months.
The Behavioral Health Care Provider Loan Repayment Program has been established to pay portions of educational loans taken out by behavioral healthcare providers and nurses who serve in behavioral health facilities.
The Increasing Practice Readiness of New Graduate Nurses is a Maricopa County-specific program. The program aims to decrease new nurse turnover rates and burnout.
The Arizona Healthcare Workforce Minimum Data Set is a collaboration of Arizona stakeholders to develop a system to provide timely, accurate and standardized data about the healthcare workforce in Arizona.
The Graduate Medical Education Residency Program applies to qualifying community health centers and rural clinics. This program aims to support and expand the number of primary care residency positions and provide support and technical assistance for starting or expanding primary care residency programs.
The Arizona State Loan Repayment Program provides loan repayment assistance to healthcare professionals who provide outpatient primary care services in designated Health Professional Shortage Areas (HPSA).
To address Arizona’s critical physician workforce shortage and meet the healthcare demands of the rapidly growing community in the East Valley Dignity Health has expanded its graduate medical education program.
The Arizona Board of Regents has asked Arizona State University to expand medical education in Arizona by launching a new medical school, one charged with addressing the significant and growing health care needs of the state.
This project aims to increase the number and diversity of family nurse practitioners, psychiatric mental health nurse practitioners, and certified nurse midwife students trained with the University of Arizona and federally qualified health center partners in Southern Arizona.
The Federal National Interest Waiver (NIW) program allows certain foreign workers with advanced degrees, including foreign physicians (MDs), or exceptional abilities to work in the United States. This program aims to increase physicians in federally designated primary care health professional shortage areas (HPSA), medically underserved areas (MUA), medically underserved populations (MUP), or mental health professional shortage areas (MHPSA).
The Nurse Corps Loan Repayment Program assists in the recruitment and retention of professional Registered Nurses (RNs) and advanced practice RNs. The program offers substantial financial assistance to eligible RNs to repay a portion of their qualifying educational loans in exchange for full-time service either at a health care facility with a critical shortage of nurses or at an accredited eligible school of nursing in the case of nurse faculty.
The Nurse Corps Scholarship Program enables students accepted or enrolled in a diploma, associate, baccalaureate, or graduate nursing program to receive funding for tuition, fees, and other educational costs in exchange for service after graduation by working at an eligible Critical Shortage Facility located in a federally designated Health Professional Shortage Area (HPSA).
The Health and Human Services Nurse Workforce Program aims to increase the number of nursing school faculty, support the career ladders of licensed practical nurses and vocational nurses to become registered nurses, and train more nurses to become primary care providers who address mental health issues, substance use disorder issues and maternal health.
The Nurse Faculty Loan Program (NFLP) seeks to increase the number of qualified nursing faculty nationwide by providing low-interest loans for individuals studying to be nurse faculty and loan cancelation for those who then work as faculty.
The Licensed Practical Nursing Expansion seeks to increase opportunities for students entering the nursing and healthcare fields. While expanding opportunities for current nursing assistants to up-skill and advance their careers.