“Caregivers come to this work because they have a big heart, but having a big heart doesn't mean that they are prepared to do what is a both a mentally and physically taxing job,” says Corinne Eldridge, president and chief executive officer of the Center for Caregiver Advancement. That’s where CCA’s training programs come in, which have upskilled more than 70,000 in-home caregivers in the last 25 years in courses that cover the essentials of doing the job as well as managing a variety of specific conditions such as diabetes, autism, and heart disease. As Eldridge explains to Futuro Health CEO Van Ton-Quinlivan, CCA has formed a number of academic partnerships so that its trainings can be informed by research and data analysis. For instance, a recent study on the efficacy of online training for workers caring for people with Alzheimer’s and related dementias showed that it improved knowledge and caregiving skills, and also boosted self-efficacy in managing symptoms. Beyond developing relevant job skills, Eldridge sees training as a critical component in creating jobs that will attract and retain workers. “Access to training makes you feel more confident in your work and actually keeps you in the work because you have something to look forward to and a way to advance.” In this valuable discussion on WorkforceRx, you’ll also learn about the need for culturally and linguistically competent caregivers, the complexities of providing care to family members, and why Eldridge thinks these challenging times call for creativity.

One way to close the historically large and growing gap in income and wealth in America is for more wage earners to become business owners so they can start building assets. That’s a theory that our WorkforceRx guest, Alfredo Mathew III, has seen working in California using a state-supported community capital fund in under-invested communities. “The big opportunity is to help shift businesses that are sole proprietors to build up to $500,000 or more in revenue so they can hire employees and ultimately grow beyond the labor of the founder. That way, you are creating an asset that is going to grow, which is the foundation of wealth building,” says Mathew, a former educator turned social entrepreneur and systems thinker who was instrumental in launching that fund. He is simultaneously pursuing a shared ownership model through an organization he founded called SPCC.1, that groups small business into cooperatives so that members can enjoy the benefits that scale brings, including higher potential for income growth and purchasing power for insurance and other business needs. In this wide-ranging and provocative conversation with Futuro Health CEO Van Ton-Quinlivan, you’ll also learn how pre-distribution, micro assets, financial literacy and regenerative lending are essential elements of an alternative approach to building both individual and community prosperity in the U.S.

“The pace of change is just so rapid right now and that requires people at all levels throughout the organization to be agile and to continue to learn and grow,” says Carole Bennett, vice president of Talent Management and Development at Sutter Health, a twenty-four hospital system serving Northern California. In addition to building an ‘every day, everywhere’ continuous learning culture to keep employees up to date, Sutter Health also needs to solve for the workforce shortages plaguing the industry by preparing the internal workforce for new roles. “Part of what we're really trying to do is help people map their career aspirations and then provide development opportunities so that they can achieve those goals,” she shares with Futuro Health CEO Van Ton-Quinlivan. Studies show this grow-your-own approach results in higher employee retention and satisfaction, and also gives a boost to recruitment efforts, which Bennett has seen first-hand. As for new employees, they engage with Sutter Health University, the organization’s learning arm, which Bennett believes is helping the system become a talent destination. Spend some time learning from this leading voice in employee development as she illustrates the important role of mentoring and coaching, describes how learning opportunities build agility and resilience, and offers tips on how to gain leadership support for learning resources.

Eleven thousand people turn sixty-five every day in the US, a pace which is continuing to intensify the challenges of providing adequate care for seniors. On this episode of WorkforceRx we're going to learn what this means for the quality of life of the elderly population -- especially for those with dementia and their caregivers -- from Jarmin Yeh, associate professor in the Institute for Health and Aging in the School of Nursing at University of California, San Francisco. “There is a big gap between what people desire and what services and programs are available and accessible in two ways: physically accessible, but also accessible from the standpoint of language, being culturally inclusive, and accommodating to the different needs that an older adult may have,” she explains. Closing that gap, Yeh says, requires a collective approach that includes policy makers, municipal planners, caregivers, care recipients and community members at large, all focused on creating the age-friendly built environment and opportunities for social connection that seniors need to thrive. Join Futuro Health CEO Van Ton-Quinlivan for an in-depth look at those issues, plus promising workforce training programs for direct care workers, efforts to boost community-wide awareness of the signs of dementia, and small adaptations in the home that can enhance comfort and safety for seniors.

“The traditional workforce training system has really focused on a very rigid model that doesn't work for how technology has shifted and how demographics are shifting,” says Sabari Raja, who is trying to accelerate the availability of more flexible training models as managing partner of JFFVentures, an impact fund that was spun out of the forty year old workforce development nonprofit, Jobs For the Future. With 45% of the US workforce making less than $50,000 a year, Raja and her team are investing in solutions that support economic mobility for middle-to-low wage populations through access to skills, job opportunities, work-based learning, and wrap-around supports to remove barriers to getting and keeping a job. She is also looking for a certain type of entrepreneur. “We want to support founders that are coming to the table with lived experience, with passion and purpose, but also with the right technical skills to build a viable business,” she tells Futuro Health CEO Van Ton-Quinlivan. Tune-in to learn about emerging companies that are using AI for ESL learning, college advising, supporting solopreneurs and helping small businesses offer personalized training to employees. You’ll also come away with an understanding of how impact investing is lifting up mission-driven companies that can thrive and return capital for all stakeholders

On this episode of WorkforceRx, we take a close look at a successful model for assisting a part of the U.S. workforce that faces more challenges than most others: formerly incarcerated individuals. Among the headwinds they face in the job market are social stigmas, legal barriers, and a lack of up-to-date skills, which explains an unemployment rate of over 27% for this population. Over the last several decades, the Center for Employment Opportunities has developed an effective approach for reducing recidivism that combines immediate employment after release with one-on-one case management, job placement and job retention services, propelling it to become the nation's largest re-entry employment organization. As the Center’s CEO Sam Schaeffer explains, nearly half of its funding comes through contracts with public agencies, such as parks departments, which are in need of supplemental labor that's highly flexible. “We go in and make the case that you need this work and we can provide it in a cost-effective way. It’s a testament to the amazing work that our crew members do every day that once we're in and people see how strong the work is, it’s very rare for us to not have that become a multi-decade relationship.” Join Futuro Health CEO Van Ton-Quinlivan as she explores other success factors in the Center’s model such as cash incentives, daily paychecks and helping participants find higher level work that provides both purpose and economic mobility.

While it’s customary for companies to claim that ‘people are our most important resource’, today’s WorkforceRx guest, Dr. Angela Jackson, knows that amounts to lip service at many firms. In her new book The Win-Win Workplace: How Thriving Employees Drive Bottom Line Success, Dr. Jackson shares what it looks like when a company walks the talk. In researching 1,700 companies for the book, and based on countless meetings with business leaders, Dr. Jackson spotted commonalities among the most successful workplaces. “I saw investments around centering worker voice, I saw that the leadership was doing deep employee training -- not just for the skills for today, but really looking around the corner and seeing the skills of tomorrow -- and many of these thriving workplaces had a very specific initiative around measuring this so they could actually tell you how those had a correlation to lift on the bottom line,” says Dr. Jackson, who is also a lecturer at Harvard University and CEO of Future Forward Strategies. In this super informative conversation with Futuro Health CEO Van Ton-Quinlivan, Dr. Jackson shares many examples of how companies effectively incorporate worker input, track employee wellbeing, and build trust, all while achieving strong financial performance. “We looked at real ROI and saw increased share price. It's not fluffy. It's not soft. These are real results.” Tune in for a deeply-informed look at how to unlock organizational potential by redefining traditional approaches to human capital, and also learn how companies are navigating pushback on DEI programs in this high stakes environment.

Too many students go through college focused on fulfilling course requirements for their major with insufficient attention to their actual personal and career interests. The result is they earn empty college degrees that are not connected to the life that comes after graduation. Those provocative conclusions come from a new book called Hacking College: Why the Major Doesn't Matter and What Really Does by veteran college administrator Ned Scott Laff, and Scott Carlson, senior writer for The Chronicle of Higher Education. “A singular focus on the major winds up confusing students and not allowing them to take advantage of all the other things that are in the college space and how they could marry some of these things to their actual interests,” says Carlson. To make their college education more relevant to them, Laff says it’s critical that advisers help students determine what they are really interested in. “All of a sudden, a sociology major can be a pre-med program or a business program or a marketing program. When you change the conversation, students begin to see the learning opportunities on campus and the whole nature of the college changes without the structure of the college changing at all. It's just how students take advantage of the opportunities that are right there.” Join Futuro Health CEO Van Ton-Quinlivan for a fascinating exploration of how students can explore the college system, the surrounding community, and the hidden job market to connect their learning with their true interests and get on the path to building a fulfilling career.

There’s a growing consensus that the best patient care is delivered by multidisciplinary teams, but as you’ll hear on this episode of WorkforceRx, generating solutions to problems facing healthcare and medical education can benefit from the same interprofessional approach. That’s what our guest, Dr. Patricia Cuff, has learned leading the Global Forum on Innovation in Health Professional Education at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine with a membership that includes academic experts and practitioners from many specialties. “Everyone has a voice in the Forum and everyone is considered an important part of the team. This is actually quite rare in education as well as healthcare, where everything tends to be much more siloed.” One of the top concerns identified in workshops and larger Forum convenings is a lack of required education in geriatrics even though the growing elderly population presents a major challenge to the health system. Other key concerns highlighted by Forum members include incompatibility of electronic health records, the high cost of education and provider burnout. Join Futuro Health CEO Van Ton-Quinlivan for a look at what solutions Forum members are identifying for these and other problems and what’s changing, and needs to change, in the education of healthcare providers to create a future with more team-based, patient-centered care.

States are often described as laboratories for public policy development on major issues, generating new best practices that can spread to other states and influence federal action. As an acknowledged leader in working to improve healthcare access and quality, California’s innovations in this area are closely watched, including the unusual step it took in the last few years to allow non-traditional providers to participate in its Medicaid program, known as Medi-Cal. According to our WorkforceRx guest, Carlina Hansen of the California Health Care Foundation, the idea behind it is to tap provider resources that are more closely connected to the patients being served. “California is interested in seeing how we can amplify the role of community-connected workers such as doulas, peer support specialists and health navigators who often act as trusted bridges between the healthcare system and our communities,” she explains to Futuro Health CEO Van Ton-Quinlivan. A new Foundation report reveals the approach is gaining some traction thanks in part to the role of Community Care Hubs which help providers new to the system navigate administrative requirements that can serve as barriers to entry. “Hubs act as sort of the connective tissue between health plans, providers, and communities. They hold the promise to make it easier to connect those community-based providers and their patients to Medi-Cal.” This in-depth conversation offers a ground level view of promising innovations in providing community-based, whole person care with an expanded interprofessional team.