Workforce Transformation

Rhode Island’s health & human services could not exist without a dedicated, well-trained, highly skilled workforce that is reflective of the diversity of the communities and individuals whom they serve. That is why EOHHS has identified support for the health and human services workforce as one of its five core priorities.

As Rhode Island’s health and human services partners continually strive to transform and improve care and services for all Rhode Islanders, so must we continue to assess and improve how we train, deploy, and support our health and human services workforce.

EOHHS is committed to collaborating with healthcare and education providers, payors, policymakers, labor and community partners and others to identify and address our state’s significant healthcare workforce challenges through an ongoing health workforce planning process.

Health & Human Services Workforce Planning Core Principles:

Building a Robust and Adaptive Workforce: The ultimate objective of each workgroup is to help build and sustain a health workforce that is sufficiently sized and well trained, that has access to appropriate career advancement opportunities, and that is able to adapt to the changing needs of Rhode Islanders, while delivering high quality and high value care.
Centering Work on Ensuring a More Equitable Workforce: Workgroups should focus on addressing the root causes of why the state’s health workforce does not sufficiently reflect all Rhode Islanders, which, in turn, underlie disparate access and health inequalities. Across all workgroups there should be an overall emphasis on reorienting systems to better address barriers to increasing cultural, ethnic, and linguistic diversity within the state’s health workforce.
Focusing on Improvements to System Sustainability: Each workgroup should consider the need for a sustainable health delivery system in Rhode Island, which encompasses a workforce that is appropriately compensated and supported, as well as the systems and supports necessary to allow service providers to continue to deliver first class care.

We encourage you to learn more and get involved!

Ladders to Licensure Grant Program

Planning, Activities, & Summits

Workforce Data

Resources

Caring Careers

Health Professional Equity Initiative