The third season of our podcast, STAR² Center Talks Workforce Success is out now! This season will explore how those in the field are engaging in successful, sustainable, organizationally-supported self-care and the impact that has on retention and recruitment.

The concept of "self-care" can mean different things to different people and with that variety of definitions comes numerous tools and tips to support! The STAR² Center team has featured a round up of apps and resources to support your individual self-care practice in our Workforce Self-Care Resource Repository. This round up of resources was compiled by Bobby Berk and features something for everyone to help you progress in your self-care journey.

The STAR² Center invites you to join us in this two-part webinar series on the retention and recruitment of medical assistants (MAs) and dental assistants (DAs). In response to the challenges health centers are currently facing when it comes to retaining and recruiting MAs and DAs, the STAR² Center partnered with The National Institute for Medical Assistant Advancement (NIMAA) and National Network for Oral Health Access (NNOHA) to bring you experts in the field who will share strategies and promising practices to better develop your MA and DA workforce.

The STAR² Center team invites workforce staff from PCA and HCCN teams to participate in the upcoming workforce professional development series to bolster workforce efforts internally and to help those teams to provide a robust support system for recruitment and retention at their health centers. Learn more and save your spot for this four-part, semi-monthly series today!

Join the STAR² Center team and Katherine Brieger from Sun River Health for a discussion of the ACE-15 Survey, a tool for assessing the critical qualities that make clinical teams effective. During this one hour you will learn how to get the most out of this short, but useful survey, how to analyze the results, and what exactly you can do with that information to make your health center’s teams stronger and more cohesive.

As calls to bolster the resilience of the health center workforce grow louder and more frequent, leadership and HR staff must think strategically about how best to deploy their resources and support their staff. Please join the Association of Clinicians for the Underserved (ACU) STAR² Center in Nashville, TN, from May 2-3, at Going Beyond Buzzwords: Striving for a Thriving Workforce. This two-day workforce symposium will provide attendees with the opportunity to dig deep into a slate of topics related to promoting resilience and transformations in care to effectively support health center teams.

Health center teams are invited to join the STAR² Center team in Nashville, TN, following our symposium, Going Beyond Buzzwords: Striving for a Thriving Workforce, for this two-day interactive training to jump-start your health center’s creation or improvement of a Retention & Recruitment Plan. Each day of the training will be dedicated to the topics of one half of a complete R&R plan, equipping health center staff with the skills and knowledge needed to create or revamp their health centers’ Plan. Being able to achieve these results will help ensure a health center’s long-term sustainability, improve business operations, and increase the ability to continue offering mission-driven, patient-centered healthcare for all.

The STAR² Center is seeking opportunities to present in-person on how health centers can best support their workforce to assess and mitigate burnout, compassion fatigue, moral injury, and moral distress, in order to address employee well-being and increase workforce retention. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, we know that health center staff are, and have been, under immense stress. With these trainings, we hope to help our community’s workforce grow resiliency and combat burnout through evidence-based, thoughtful programming and support.

The Health Center Resource Clearinghouse is designed as a one-stop online repository of training and technical assistance resources developed for health centers by the National Training and Technical Assistance Partners. Topics include finance, operations, workforce, quality improvement, capital development, HIT/data, governance and emerging issues.