New legislation could ease public health’s workforce shortages
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* Lindsey Wahowiak

The answer to the shortage of public health workers, particularly those who have cultural competence in working with minority populations, may already be here.

Introduced on June 10, H.R. 2709, the Professional’s Access to Health Workforce Integration Act aims to put to work the thousands of people living in the U.S. who have training in health professions from other countries. The professionals who would benefit from the legislation are already living in the U.S., and authorized to work, but are either under- or unemployed in their area of expertise. These well-trained health professionals could fill the growing void of the health workforce in the U.S., according to bill supporters. The Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health estimates a shortage of 250,000 public health workers in the U.S. by 2020.

The bill has APHA Executive Board member José Ramón Fernández-Peña, MD, MPA, to thank in part for its existence. Fernández-Peña, an associate professor in the Department of Health Education at San Francisco State University, is the founder of the Welcome Back Initiative, which has been working for more than a decade to help internationally-trained workers find jobs in their chosen fields in the U.S., from nursing to dentistry, pharmacy to mental health and primary care to community health. The initiative served as the model for the bill.

Working with APHA’s government relations team, Fernández-Peña helped shape the PATH Workforce Integration Act, first as an add-on to the 2014 Health Equity and Accountability Act, and then this year as a stand-alone bill, introduced by Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Calif., in the U.S. House of Representatives.

“Our health care system is rapidly approaching a crisis, because there are not enough qualified health professionals to meet the medical needs of the American people,” Roybal-Allard said in a statement. “The Professional’s Access to Health Workforce Integration Act addresses this shortage by providing guidance and assistance to the many foreign-trained health professionals who are legally residing in the U.S. (It) will help these professionals to pursue health jobs that match their skills, education and expertise. If we want America to have a health workforce large enough to care for our growing population, it is critical that we secure increased participation from our country’s foreign-trained health professionals.”

Fernández-Peña noted that the act could offer thousands of people the chance to come back to the health industry. In that way, he said, gaps here are filled, and are not created abroad.

“We’re very conscious and opposed to the idea of brain drain,” Fernández-Peña told *The Nation’s Health*. “We would only work with individuals who are already in the United States. It not only does not take jobs away from anybody, it gives individuals a chance to practice what they already know, their talents and knowledge and assets, and bring their cultural (knowledge) to communities, which we desperately need.”

Other organizations working to make the PATH Workforce Integration Act a reality include Community College Consortium for Immigrant Education, World Education Services, the Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians, Upwardly Global and the Welcome Back Initiative.

The PATH Workforce Integration Act was referred to committee on June 10.

For more, email nicole.burda{at}apha.org.

*   Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association