The National Implementation Evaluation (NIE) of the Health Profession Opportunity Grants (HPOG): Program Implementation and Outcomes

Werner, Alan; Werner, Alan

As part of the Affordable Care Act of 2010, Congress authorized funds for the HPOG program “to conduct demonstration projects that provide eligible individuals with the opportunity to obtain education and training for occupations in the healthcare field that pay well and are expected to either experience labor shortages or be in high demand.” In 2010, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded grants to 32 organizations, including 5 tribal and 27 non-tribal training programs in high-demand healthcare professions targeted to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families recipients and other low-income individuals. HPOG Programs are designed using a career pathways framework that combines support services with education and training services to help participants overcome barriers to successful training completion and employment.

ACF’s Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE) is using a multipronged research and evaluation strategy to assess the success of the HPOG Program. The HPOG National Implementation Evaluation (NIE) is part of this strategy. The HPOG NIE Descriptive Implementation and Outcome Study Report was released in April 2016 and addresses two major research questions:

1. How are health professions training programs being implemented across the grantee sites?

2. What individual-level outputs and outcomes occur?

This paper (the NIE Descriptive Implementation and Outcomes Report) and presentation summarize the findings of the NIE across a wide range of program design and implementation features, as well as key participant outcomes. Principal data sources for the Descriptive Implementation Study are surveys of HPOG grantees, program management and staff, HPOG partners and stakeholders, and healthcare employers. These surveys were fielded in November 2013 through April 2014, when HPOG was in its fourth year of implementation, and achieved high response rates. Data from the HPOG Performance Reporting System (PRS), HPOG program management materials (e.g., grant applications, progress reports), quarterly wage data from the National Directory of New Hires (NDNH), and secondary data sources on local area labor markets and socio-economic environments are used for the Outcome Study.

Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Panel Paper: The National Implementation Evaluation (NIE) of the Health Profession Opportunity Grants (HPOG): Program Implementation and Outcomes