By Lauren Cenac, BA
My experience during this year’s Health Workforce Research Conference was truly eye opening. The American Association of Medical Colleges, a non-profit group of accredited medical schools throughout the United States and Canada, held the conference in Chicago in early May. Most of the content during the sessions was intended for physicians and other medical practitioners. As a student pursuing my Master of Public Health (MPH), it was interesting to get a glimpse into some of the problems affecting the medical workforce, most of which are not covered in typical MPH courses, despite how relevant these issues are to public health initiatives.
Many of the conference sessions highlighted research on the inequitable health care utilization among underserved populations based on poverty, race, ethnicity, geography, lack of insurance, and/or stigmatizing conditions such as HIV. If all these underserved groups sufficiently accessed and utilized health care, projections show that the United States will face a staggering shortage of 96,000 physicians by 2025. What’s interesting to note is that previous projections have estimated smaller shortfalls because they did not account for equitable access and utilization of health care services by underserved populations. It’s encouraging to see that researchers are making progress in documenting the gaps in health care utilization in vulnerable populations; however, the research should not stop there.
While projections such as these may be alarming, I couldn’t help but wonder during the conference how a greater focus on preventive services would alter these shortage estimates. In one session, the presenter pointed out that physician density did not impact avoidable hospitalizations as much as poverty, race/ethnicity, age distribution, and other social determinants of health. Taking this research into account, it seems logical that rather than only focusing on recruiting more medical residents to practice primary care to combat the physician shortage, we should also focus on prevention efforts and health promotion programs that address the social determinants of health. Solving complex health workforce problems will require multi-faceted and innovative solutions. For those of us in public health, it’s our job to help develop and implement the solutions that will optimize health in these vulnerable populations.
Lauren Cenac is a second-year MPH student and a scholar in the Center of Excellence in Maternal and Child Health at Tulane. She plans to graduate in August 2016 from the Department of Global Community Health and Behavioral Sciences with a concentration in Maternal and Child Health. Her interests include prenatal and postpartum care, breastfeeding, and health communication, policy, and research.
