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Creating the Health Workforce Information Center
By Wendy Opsahl and Amanda Scurry
It’s four weeks before the project launch. Despite their hastily-assembled  office quarters, digital librarians are working with the precision and speed of an Indy 500 pit crew, steadily tagging, coding and adding information to “the database”. Web and design experts have been laboring for weeks over how to organize “the database’s” massive amounts of information into a website that is easy to navigate. A cross-country communications team has been strategizing promotion of this new project, including the biggest national press conference they’ve ever worked on. And one soft-spoken, red-headed leader is orchestrating every strategic move.
This is a behind-the-scenes look at what it took to launch the Health Workforce Information Center – the nation’s first online clearinghouse for information and resources related to health workforce professions and industry.
 Seeing the need
This story actually begins seven months earlier in June 2008, when Kristine Sande, MBA, a project director at the University of North Dakota medical school’s Center for Rural Health was browsing grants.gov for funding opportunities.
“I ran across a posting from the federal Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), looking for someone to produce a digital library on health workforce information, and knew we were the right team for the job,” said Sande. “We created a similar online resource six years ago – the Rural Assistance Center – that has received over three million web visits and has a strong reputation nationally for being ‘the place to go’.”
While much of the nation is experiencing a lack of job openings, health care job vacancies are at crisis levels. With critical shortages of physicians, nurses and allied health personnel, solutions to address the vacancies can come none too soon.
“We were looking for a way to more easily provide the wealth of valuable workforce information out there to health leaders across the country,” said Elizabeth Duke, PhD, former HRSA administrator. “We thought that having the information in one, easy-to-access resource would save them time and help them find things like educational programs and ways to retain health workers and ultimately increase and maintain staffing.”
Four weeks after finding the grant opportunity, a swiftly-pulled-together team of experts, and one 80-page grant proposal later, the team waited, if somewhat impatiently, for a response. It arrived two months later: HRSA had selected the Center for Rural Health from a very competitive pool of applicants to establish the Health Workforce Information Center (HWIC).
The North Dakota team flew into a flurry of activity, adding seven staff members to help support the $3.75 million endeavor and effectively outgrowing the Center’s fourth-floor home at the UND medical school. With meticulous planning and an aggressive production schedule, the project was slated to launch February 5, 2009.
What is it?
HWIC provides information on health workforce resources in one centralized and easy-to-access online location—the first resource of its kind to do so, effectively saving visitors enormous amounts of time. Resources available through HWIC’s website help health providers, educators, researchers and policymakers around the nation develop strategies to meet future workforce demands.
Visitors have a broad range of publications and other resources at their fingertips. The site also offers free, customized assistance from information specialists, who search databases on workforce topics and funding resources, furnish relevant publications, and connect users to workforce experts and federal programs, among others.
"Many people in government, private and nonprofit organizations need timely, easy access to the types of resources the center makes available," said Maren Niemeier, MLIS, HWIC's information architect. "Accurate information on health workforce will be vitally important in the ongoing health care debate, and we provide a way for individuals to get it from a single, trusted source."
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Jim Bentley, PhD; Darrell Kirch, MD; Elizabeth Duke, PhD, and Kristine Sande, MBA, at the HWIC press conference in Washington, D.C. |
An established reputation
The project capitalizes on Center for Rural Health expertise in producing and managing national information clearinghouses. The Center is one of the premier rural health organizations in the country, home to the often-referenced Rural Assistance Center (RAC), a gateway to rural health information, and a similar, soon-to-be released project for rural veteran information.
HWIC joins a long list of superstar projects that bring national attention to the generally quiet, reserved Northern Plains state. With the power of technology, HWIC doesn’t need to be based in a major metro area like Washington, D.C., New York or Chicago. HWIC experts can live and work in North Dakota, but seamlessly connect people with experts and resources across the United States.
“Connecting the nation to health workforce information now starts in North Dakota - at UND’s doorstep. This initiative provides information that will be used to make well-informed decisions – whether in hospitals, universities, or at our nation’s Capitol,” said Sande, HWIC director.
“Sharing information ranging from cutting-edge training initiatives to state policy strategies at one central location, HWIC is an efficient way for individuals to obtain timely and relevant workforce information,” she continued.
Ready to roll
Thousands of hours of work, fueled by more caffeine than anyone dares admit, came to a head on February 5, 2009, when the new HWIC website debuted to a national audience of more than 75 reporters, organizational leaders, decision-makers and workforce specialists at the historic National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
Representatives from influential organizations such as the American Association of Family Practitioners and the National Association of Community Health Centers lauded HWIC’s time-savings benefit, provided by locating workforce-related information in one location.
“As our nation grows and changes, we face serious challenges to provide timely, effective and efficient care to people,” said Jim Bentley, PhD, senior vice president for strategic policy planning at the American Hospital Association. “Whether market-based solutions or workforce planning, we need to have one set of accessible, shared facts that we can all work from.”
Others talked hopefully about the collaboration that may occur, as users learn of model programs and connect with experts.
 “This is just the beginning of us working together as a comprehensive system,” said Darrell Kirch, MD, president and chief executive officer of the Association of American Medical Colleges. “So while this is a critically important tool, at the end of the day, every one of us is going to be in that bed someday and we’re going to want to know that there is a doctor, a nurse, or a pharmacist in the house when we need one.”
Just getting started
The HWIC traveling team sat reflectively at Reagan International Airport in Washington, D.C., waiting to board a flight back to North Dakota. Physically and mentally drained by the intensity of HWIC’s launch, they basked for just a moment in the wake of completing a successful and significant milestone in the project’s short history. But the moment didn’t last long. Anxious to learn how the first thousands of visitors were using the new resource, members pondered aloud how to refine the project even further. Back in North Dakota, the e-mails and phone calls poured in from curious and anticipating people across the country, getting right down to the business of searching for long-awaited health workforce information.
And so it began, the connection of people and information, in a big step toward improving the nation’s health workforce system.
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