UCSF Center for the Health Professions celebrates 10 years

By Maureen McInaney

The UCSF Center for the Health Professions will celebrate its ten-year anniversary on October 14, 2002 with a day-long symposium.

* WHAT: UCSF Center for Health Professions 10 -year Anniversary Symposium
* WHERE: Laurel Heights Conference Center, 3333 California, SF
* TIME: October 14, 2002, 9a.m. to 5p.m.  Reception to follow.

Entitled “The Next Ten Years: Healthcare’s Shifting Workforce Landscape,” the symposium will feature some of the nation’s leading thinkers and policymakers and focus on some of the most pressing issues facing health care:

* Fostering effective leadership within healthcare;
* Examining population diversity as a strategic asset;
* Exploring current and future health professions practice models;
* Facing the challenges of providing healthcare to our aging population; and
* Mapping strategies for building healthy communities

## Featured speakers include:

* Rebecca Rimel, president of the Pew Charitable Trusts
* David Hayes-Bautista, PhD, Director of the UCLA Center for the Study of Latino Health
* Charles Bertolami, DDS, DMedSc, Dean of the UCSF School of Dentistry
* Beth Witrogen McLeod, author, journalist and consultant on aging, health and healing
* José Ramón Fernández-Peña, MD, MPH, Director of the San Francisco Bay Area Regional Health Occupations Resource Center

Started in 1992 through the Pew Charitable Trusts, the UCSF Center for the Health Professions has focused its efforts on understanding the challenges faced by the health care workforce, whose labor comprises 70 percent of healthcare costs.

Over the past decade, the Center has implemented more than 50 programs with over $88 million in funding. The Center’s current work—in more than 20 programs and with an operating budget of over $20 million - includes such efforts as:

* Tracking the supply, demand and distribution of the numerous health professions;
* Providing research on mandatory nurse patient ratios;
* Conducting a national study of the nursing shortage;
* Developing national, state, and local leadership programs for healthcare professionals; and
* Redefining the scope of oral health beyond the practice of dentistry;

“I think of the Center for the Health Professions as a kind of think tank - an incubator of big thoughts - a place where expansive views, introspective reflections, and the brains of immensely gifted people all marinate together to yield new and different ways of thinking about the healthcare professions,” said Charles Bertolami, DDS, DmedSc, Dean of the UCSF School of Dentistry.

“In addition to tackling a broad range of health profession issues, the Center is also committed to finding new and better ways of implementing improvements within the health care system,” said Ed O’Neil, PhD MPH, director of the Center. “By crafting specific recommendations for policymakers, providing a wide range of technical assistance for health professionals, and communicating with our audiences in proactive, tailored ways, we are able to effect change.”

Current projects are targeted at creating leaders who will one day assume positions of influence and explore, promote and advance reform within the California health care work force, O’Neil explained.

Before establishing the UCSF Center for the Health Professions in 1992, O’Neil served as Executive Director of the Pew Health Professions Commission. Prior to his work at the Pew, O’Neil conducted research at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Duke University and the University of North Carolina. O’Neil has degrees in social and intellectual history, political science, and public policy administration.

For more information about the October 14, 2002 symposium or other Center programs, visit http://futurehealth.ucsf.edu or call 415-476-8181.