US-Mexico Border Centers of Excellence Consortium
2001-2003 

Purpose

        To develop and implement a strategic plan for reducing the health professional shortages along the US-Mexico border.  Establishing this Consortium was the first stop toward remedying this workforce shortage. 
        The Consortium was developed through partnerships with the following Health Resources and Services Administration programs: 

• Center of Excellence (COE)

• Health Careers Opportunity Program (HCOP)

• Minority Faculty Fellowship Program (MFFP)

• Area Health Education Centers (AHEC)

• Health Education Training Centers (HETC)

The Division for the National Centers for Health Workforce Information and Analysis:

• Center for California Health Workforce Studies

• South Central Center for Health Workforce Studies

The Hispanic Serving Health Professions Schools, Inc.

Objectives

1. Assess the needs and resources related to health professions workforce capacity, and the diversity of HRSA-funded programs for addressing education/training and placement along the US-Mexico border states of Arizona, California, New Mexico, Texas (target date-December 2001).

2. Plan and implement a US-Mexico Border Centers of Excellence Consortium Forum to discuss the results of the needs/resource assessment and address the health workforce shortage via improving coordination, collaboration, and communication with border health entities (target date-February 2002). 

3. Develop and disseminate Forum proceedings and programmatic recommendations to decrease health professions workforce shortages in the US-Mexico border states (target date-May 2002).

4. Develop and implement a dissemination plan for the Forum proceedings to key stakeholders in workforce capacity and diversity at the local, state, and federal levels (target date-August 2002).

5. Develop a strategic plan for a Center of Excellence Border Consortium that addresses health workforce training and education issues along the border (target date- August 2002).  The strategic plan will include development of a mission Statement, goals, objectives, specific activities, administrative and management team structure, evaluation plan, and budget.

Membership
Core members represent the four Centers of Excellence (COE) programs in each of the border states: 

* University of Arizona Health Sciences Center School of Medicine Hispanic COE
* University of California Los Angeles School of Medicine COE
* University of New Mexico School of Medicine Hispanic & Native American COE
* Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, El Paso Hispanic COE
* University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio Medical Hispanic COE
* University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston School of Medicine, Hispanic COE 
* US Health Resources and Services Administration Division of Health Careers Diversity and Development

Defining the Geographic, Population, Workforce Target Area
        Each member first completed a needs assessment of clinical services and workforce training capacity. Each state determined which counties would be included in their assessment.

        Once the geographic areas were defined, demographic and health status profiles were collected, including information on age, gender, marital status, ethnic/race distributions and health status.

        Once the population was defined, the intent was to determine the ideal health profession workforce necessary to provide quality health care. This ideal could then be compared with the actual health professions workforce to determine the gap or need. The type of research necessary to compile this data was beyond the scope of work for the Consortium, so members used the HRSA-designated Medically Underserved Area state statistics. 

Needs/Resource Matrix
        Once the workforce need was defined, members researched the training education needs and current resources available to close the gap. Each state produced a document relative to their particular health status: