<p>This article explores the use of unconferencing to support the professional development of two Critical Human Resource Development (CHRD) graduate students and a faculty member in Human Resource Development (HRD) at the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota in the US. Unconferencing, a participant-driven process, emphasizes collaboration, interaction, and flexibility, aligning with the principles of adult education. This research outlines the application and impact of unconferencing in preparing the students for their academic conference engagement. The preparation phase incorporated unconferencing principles, allowing the students to actively shape their learning experiences and engage in meaningful dialogues. During the conference, these unconferencing strategies facilitated real-time adaptation and support, addressing challenges while supporting CHRD students. This research is grounded in Collaborative Autoethnography (CAE), a qualitative approach that leverages reflexivity and shared authorship to examine identity formation and professional growth. Thus, individual and collective narratives from the co-authors provided a nuanced understanding of their developmental journeys. These narratives highlight their concerns, the support mechanisms that were effective, and the evolution of their identities as critical scholars. The article concludes with practical recommendations for faculty aiming to cultivate relationships with CHRD students and offers strategies for institutions to support the growth of CHRD scholarship. By showcasing the transformative potential of unconferencing, this study contributes to ongoing discourse on innovative pedagogical approaches in adult education and the advancement of critical scholarship within the Academy of Human Resource Development.</p>

Using data from the Current Population Survey, we examined trends in median earnings among health care workers during the period 2015–24. We found that the workers in the lowest-earning occupations...

Objective: Disease intervention specialists (DISs) play a crucial role in the public health workforce by conducting essential tasks such as contact tracing, contact interviews, and providing referrals for services to control disease spread. Despite the importance of DISs, research is lacking on the job tasks that they perform and the role that they serve in public health agencies. The objective of this study was to identify the unique skill sets of DISs relative to other public health occupations. Methods: We used a national dataset of job postings in the United States to conduct a comparative analysis of the skills required for 3 occupations: DISs, epidemiologists, and community health workers. We examined job listings posted from July 2022 through February 2023 to determine the frequency of certain skills, and we tested for significant differences in skill mentions across these occupations. Results: Job postings for DISs were significantly more likely than those for community health workers and epidemiologists to require expertise in areas such as case management (30%), communicable disease control (49%), infectious disease knowledge (33%), and disease prevention techniques (18%). Conclusions: This study highlights the specialized nature of DISs in managing disease-related public health interventions and supporting population health. Improved data collection is needed to support workforce planning, training, and policy development to ensure the continued effectiveness and reach of DISs in public health systems.

Telehealth was essential for maintaining care continuity during the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to its rapid expansion and adoption in the United States. Since then, telehealth has been increasingly viewed as a strategy to reduce health disparities among vulnerable populations. However, data on telehealth use among socially and financially vulnerable older adults are limited, leaving unanswered questions about the role of telehealth in promoting health equity for older Americans. This study examined individual and structural factors associated with post-pandemic telehealth use among older recipients of publicly funded home- and community-based services (HCBS; an indicator of social and financial vulnerability). Using cross-sectional data from the 2021–2022 National Core Indicators-Aging and Disability Adult Consumer Survey, the analytic sample included 3,680 HCBS users aged ≥ 65 years without intellectual or developmental disability, 40% of whom used telehealth. Complete-case multivariable logistic regression, adjusting for sociodemographic and health-related factors with state-level random intercepts, revealed significantly lower odds of telehealth use associated with older age, male gender, Black race, non-metropolitan residence, and receipt of Older Americans Act services. Individuals with dementia had higher odds of telehealth use (OR, 1.33, p &lt; .05). Home internet access was strongly associated with telehealth use (OR, 2.51, p &lt; .001). Follow-up bivariate analyses showed younger age, female gender, and White race were associated with higher internet access. These findings highlight differences in telehealth use among older HCBS users associated with both individual and structural factors, offering valuable insights for efforts aimed at addressing barriers to telehealth adoption among vulnerable older adults.

Workforce shortages in home- and community-based services (HCBS) were exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic. We evaluated changes in HCBS use and consumer-reported unmet HCBS needs for (1) personal care aide (PCA) and (2) caregiver support/respite (CS/R) in 2021-2022 (during the pandemic) versus 2018-2019 (pre-pandemic), in the US National Core Indicators- Aging & Disability Adult Consumer Survey. We included 7143 community-dwelling HCBS consumers (age, ≥65 years, from 11 states). We calculated adjusted odds ratios (aOR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) for HCBS use and consumer-reported unmet HCBS needs for PCA and CS/R using logistic regression, adjusting for sociodemographic and health-related variables (fixed effects), with random intercept for state (to account for clustering by state). For PCA, compared to 2018-2019, during 2021-2022, there was a significant increase in the odds of both PCA use (aOR, 1.24; 95% CI, 1.09, 1.40) and unmet PCA needs (aOR, 1.23; 95% CI, 1.03, 1.46), suggesting that pandemic policy efforts to mitigate service disruptions were insufficient to decrease unmet PCA needs. For CS/R, during 2021-2022, there was a significant increase in the odds of CS/R use (aOR, 1.24; 95% CI, 1.09, 1.40) and a simultaneous significant decrease in the odds of unmet CS/R needs (aOR, 0.49; 95% CI, 0.35, 0.70), suggesting that temporary pandemic policies for CS/R may have successfully abated consumers-reported unmet CS/R service needs. These cross-sectional findings call for more rigorous investigation to identify which temporary pandemic-related CS/R policies were effective; to inform disaster preparedness efforts for mitigating HCBS disruptions during future public health emergencies.

Introduction: Pediatric nursing has been a profession dominated by women, but patients benefit from representation of both men and women. We describe characteristics associated with male pediatric nurses and consider potential pathways to greater male pediatric nurse workforce participation. Method: We used data from the 2018 National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses, a nationally representative survey of nurses that estimates characteristics of the workforce. We present summary statistics to describe demographic, work setting and work environment characteristics of male and pediatric nurse workforces. Analyses accounted for complex survey design and weighting. Results: Only 7% (N = 108,752) of the pediatric registered nurse workforce and 3% (N = 779) of the pediatric nurse practitioner workforces were male. Notable demographic and educational difference exist among compared workforces. Discussion: Males are significantly underrepresented in pediatric nursing. Much effort and intention need to be directed towards increasing male representation in pediatric nursing.

Women perform 77% of healthcare jobs in the US, but gender inequity within the healthcare sector harms women’s compensation and advancement in healthcare jobs. Using data from 2003 to 2021 of the Annual Social and Economic Supplement of the Current Population Survey (CPS), we measure women’s representation and the gender wage gap in healthcare jobs by education level and occupational category. We find descriptively that women’s representation in healthcare occupations has increased over time in occupations that require a master’s or doctoral/professional degree (e.g., physicians, therapists), while men’s representation has increased slightly in nursing occupations (e.g., registered nurses, LPNs/LVNs, aides and assistants). The adjusted wage gap between women and men is the largest among workers in high-education healthcare (e.g., physicians, advanced practitioners) but has decreased substantially over the last 20 years, while descriptively the gender wage gap has stagnated or grown larger in some lower education occupations. Our policy recommendations include gender equity reviews within healthcare organizations, prioritizing women managers, and realigning Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement policies to promote greater gender equity within and across healthcare occupations.

Sibling relationships have unique implications for youth well-being and adjustment, leading researchers to examine factors, such as sibling sex, that explain variation in sibling dynamics. This study was designed to unpack biological sex to examine girls’ and boys’ gender-typed personality qualities to determine whether they accounted for differences in sibling intimacy and conflict, beyond the effects of sex. Specifically, we applied the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model via multilevel modeling to 5 years of longitudinal data, collected in home interviews from two adolescent-aged siblings from 194 families, to assess links between older (Mage = 16.47 SD =.80) and younger (Mage = 13.88, SD = 1.15) siblings’ stereotypically feminine, expressive (e.g., kindness, sensitivity) characteristics and their ratings of sibling intimacy and conflict. Results indicated that youth’s expressivity was related positively to their reports of sibling intimacy and negatively to their reports of sibling conflict. Controlling for biological sex, sibling intimacy reached its highest levels and sibling conflict was at its lowest, when both siblings reported high expressivity. On a practical level, these findings illuminate malleable behaviors and characteristics that may promote harmonious sibling relationships, a significant goal given that siblings can serve as sources of support and care in adolescence and beyond.

The All of Us Research Program's Data and Research Center (DRC) was established to help acquire, curate, and provide access to one of the world's largest and most diverse datasets for precision med...

In June 2022, the United States (US) Supreme Court overturned both Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) and Roe v. Wade, the monumental 1973 case that granted the constitutional right to abortion, wi...

<h3>Importance</h3><p>The health care sector lost millions of workers during the COVID-19 pandemic and job recovery has been slow, particularly in long-term care.</p><h3>Objective</h3><p>To identify which health care workers were at highest risk of exiting the health care workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic.</p><h3>Design, Setting, and Participants</h3><p>This was an observational cross-sectional study conducted among individuals employed full-time in health care jobs from 2019 to 2021 in the US. Using the data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), we compared turnover rates before the pandemic (preperiod, January 2019-March 2020; 71 843 observations from CPS) with the first 9 months (postperiod 1, April 2020-December 2020; 38 556 observations) and latter 8 months of the pandemic (postperiod 2, January 2021-October 2021; 44 389 observations).</p><h3>Main Outcomes and Measures</h3><p>Health care workforce exits (also referred to as turnover) defined as a health care worker's response to the CPS as being unemployed or out of the labor force in a month subsequent to a month when they reported being actively employed in the health care workforce. The probability of exiting the health care workforce was estimated using a logistic regression model controlling for health care occupation, health care setting, being female, having a child younger than 5 years old in the household, race and ethnicity, age and age squared, citizenship status, being married, having less than a bachelor’s degree, living in a metropolitan area, identifier for those reporting employment status at the first peak of COVID-19, and select interaction terms with time periods (postperiods 1 and 2). Data analyses were conducted from March 1, 2021, to January 31, 2022.</p><h3>Results</h3><p>The study population comprised 125 717 unique health care workers with a mean (SD) age of 42.3 (12.1) years; 96 802 (77.0%) were women; 84 733 (67.4%) were White individuals. Estimated health care turnover rates peaked in postperiod 1, but largely recovered by postperiod 2, except for among long-term care workers and physicians. We found a 4-fold difference in turnover rates between physicians and health aides or assistants. Rates were also higher for health workers with young children (&lt;5 years), for both sexes and highest among women. By race and ethnicity, persistently higher turnover rates were found among American Indian/Alaska Native/Pacific Islander workers; White workers had persistently lower rates; and Black and Latino workers experienced the slowest job recovery rates.</p><h3>Conclusions and Relevance</h3><p>The findings of this observational cross-sectional study suggest that although much of the health care workforce is on track to recover to prepandemic turnover rates, these rates have been persistently high and slow to recover among long-term care workers, health aides and assistants, workers of minoritized racial and ethnic groups, and women with young children. Given the high demand for long-term care workers, targeted attention is needed to recruit job-seeking health care workers and to retain those currently in these jobs to lessen turnover.</p>

According to intersectionality theory, oppression predisposes individuals from disad-vantaged groups to experience disparities in health. Such disparities are evident in thesexual health among college-aged Latina women living in the U.S., who tend to reportsignificantly higher rates of sexually transmitted infections and unintended pregnanciesthan their White peers. Guided by intersectionality theory, the present study examinedsexual risk behaviors (i.e., inconsistent condom use, number of sexual partners) inrelation to ethnic identity development and reported experiences of discrimination andsexism among 450 Latina college students (ages 18–26 years old). Notably, resultsindicated that Latinas who reported relatively lower levels of ethnic identity commitmenthad, on average, approximatelyfive more sexual partners when they had reported greaterlifetime experiences of sexism. Findings highlight how sexist experiences contributed toan increased number of partners among Latinas reporting relatively lower levels of ethnicidentity commitment, demonstrating that strong ethnic identity commitment was protec-tive against risk in accordance with past research. Results indicate a continued need forsexual health interventions with Latina college students.

We analyze the 2004, 2008, and 2014 longitudinal panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to compare the percentage of long-term care (LTC) workers who held a second job in a...

Purpose: Access to paid sick leave is critically important to promoting good health, caregiving, and stopping the spread of disease. In this study, we estimate whether access to paid sick leave among US full-time workers differs between rural and urban residents. Methods: We used data from the 2020 National Health Interview Survey and included adult respondents between the ages of 18 and 64 who were employed full-time (n = 12,086). We estimated bivariate differences in access to paid sick leave by rural/urban residence, and then calculated the predicted probability of access to paid sick leave, adjusting for sociodemographic and health characteristics, across different education levels. Findings: We find a nearly 10-percentage point difference in access to paid sick leave between rural and urban adults (68.1% vs 77.1%, P<.001). The difference in access to paid sick leave between rural and urban residents remained significant even after adjusting for sociodemographic and health characteristics. The fully adjusted predicted probability of paid sick leave for rural full-time workers was 69.8%, compared with 76.4% for urban full-time workers (P<.001). We also identified lower levels of paid leave for rural (vs urban) workers within each educational category. Conclusions: Full-time workers in rural areas have less access to paid sick leave than full-time workers in urban areas. Without access to paid sick leave, rural and urban residents may go to work while contagious or forego necessary health care. Left to individual employers or localities, rural inequities in access to paid sick leave will likely persist. K E Y W O R D S chronic conditions, COVID-19, employment, paid sick leave This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

Objectives. The goal of this study was to measure unionization in the direct care workforce and the relationship between unionization and earnings, looking closely at differences across race/ethnicity and gender. Methods. Using data from the Current Population Survey from 2010 to 2020, we first used logit analyses to predict the probability of unionization among direct care workers across race/ethnicity and gender. We then measured the relationship between unionization and weekly earnings. Results. We found that male (12%) and Black (14%) direct care workers were most likely to be unionized, followed by Hispanic and other direct care workers of color. Unionized direct care workers earn wages that are about 7.8% higher than nonunionized workers, but unionized workers of color earn lower rewards for unionization compared with White direct care workers. Conclusions. Unions are a mechanism for improving job quality in direct care work, and protecting workers' rights to unionize and participate in collective bargaining equitably may be a way to stabilize and grow the direct care workforce. (Am J Public Health. 2022;112(11):1676-1684. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2022.307022).

The objective of this study was to describe how structural racism and sexism shape the employment trajectories of Black women in the US health care system. Using data from the American Community Survey, we found that Black women are more overrepresented than any other demographic group in health care and are heavily concentrated in some of its lowest-wage and most hazardous jobs. More than one in five Black women in the labor force (23 percent) are employed in the health care sector, and among this group, Black women have the highest probability of working in the long-term-care sector (37 percent) and in licensed practical nurse or aide occupations (42 percent). Our findings link Black women's position in the labor force to the historical legacies of sexism and racism, dating back to the division of care work in slavery and domestic service. Our policy recommendations include raising wages across the low-wage end of the sector, providing accessible career ladders to allow workers in low-wage health care to advance, and addressing racism in the pipeline of health care professions. T he COVID-19 pandemic has brought heightened attention to racial disparities in health outcomes as infections, hospitalizations, and deaths have had a disproportionate impact on Black populations, Indigenous populations , and populations of people of color. 1 In this article we focus on an aspect of racism and health that has gotten somewhat less attention: the role of racism in the stratification of the health care workforce. Specifically, we build on the insights of interdisciplinary scholarship about the gendered and racialized division of care to examine the unique role of Black women in health care.We argue that structural racism in the labor market, linked to historical legacies of slavery and domestic service, has had a strong impact on shaping the health care workforce. The stratification of the health care workforce and the concentration of women who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color in low-wage health care jobs is well established. 2-5 Scholars have also found that women of color in caregiv-ing jobs often experience discriminatory treatment and racist abuse from both employers and care recipients. 6,7 Our goal here is to broaden the focus beyond individual exposure to racism and discrimination to explore the role of racism at a macro level. Structural racism is defined as struc-turing opportunity and assigning value based on race, unfairly disadvantaging some individuals and communities and advantaging others. 8,9 Structural racism can only be understood by reference to historical processes, and we look to the history of care to understand contemporary patterns. Scholars of care define care broadly to include the paid and unpaid labor of caring for people who are young, old, ill, or disabled.

In the United States (US), Black—particularly Black female—healthcare workers are more likely to hold occupations with high job demand, low job control with limited support from supervisors or coworkers and are more vulnerable to job loss than their white counterparts. These work-related factors increase the risk of hypertension. This study examines the extent to which occupational segregation explains the persistent racial inequity in hypertension in the healthcare workforce and the potential health impact of workforce desegregation policies. We simulated a US healthcare workforce with four occupational classes: health diagnosing professionals (i.e., highest status), health treating professionals, healthcare technicians, and healthcare aides (i.e., lowest status). We simulated occupational segregation by allocating 25-year-old workers to occupational classes with the race- and gender-specific probabilities estimated from the American Community Survey data. Our model used occupational class attributes and workers’ health behaviors to predict hypertension over a 40-year career. We tracked the hypertension prevalence and the Black–white prevalence gap among the simulated workers under the staus quo condition (occupational segregation) and the experimental conditions in which occupational segregation was eliminated. We found that the Black–white hypertension prevalence gap became approximately one percentage point smaller in the experimental than in the status quo conditions. These findings suggest that&nbsp;policies designed to desegregate the healthcare workforce may reduce racial health inequities in this population. Our microsimulation may be used in future research to compare various desegregation policies as they may affect workers’ health differently.