Home Health Care Workforce Researched
Part of a Cornell research team that is working to elevate home health care workers, Senior Associate Dean of Outreach and Sponsored Research Ariel Avgar, Ph.D. ’08, is an expert in health care labor relations.
“There’s a tendency in the health care industry to view the workforce as a cost – a cost that needs to be minimized,” Avgar says. “In our research, we try to demonstrate how this workforce is not just a cost but a central way in which organizations can deliver high-quality care,” he said in a Cornell Chronicle story.
Avgar has worked often with Dr. Madeline Sterling ’08, assistant professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine, to improve the working conditions of home health aides, home attendants and nursing assistants while also improving their patients’ outcomes.
With other Cornell colleagues, they authored "Utilization, Contributions, and Perceptions of Paid Home Care Workers among Households in New York State. " Douglas Wigdor, the Cornell Center for Health Equity and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute have supported some of their growing body of work exploring the working conditions and future of the rapidly growing home care workforce. The number of home care workers is expected to increase from 2.3 million across New York state to nearly four million by 2030.
Recent stories about research by Avgar and Sterling on paid home care workers include: