Public Policy Commons^™

Next Steps In Advancing Pediatric Care In Southern Nevada, The Lincy Institute

Lincy Institute Events

The Lincy Institute released new research evaluating the Southern Nevada pediatric care ecosystem. The report, "An Evaluation of Southern Nevada’s Pediatric Care Ecosystem," offers recommendations to develop a stronger and more coordinated pediatric care ecosystem before the stand-alone children’s hospital being developed by Intermountain Health opens in 2030 and identifies the components of an integrated statewide network to provide all of Nevada’s children with access to high-quality care. The event also featured panel discussions with pediatric care providers and policymakers.

Panel 1 - Pediatric Care Providers

Moderator — Tina Quigley, Project Facilitator, The Lincy Institute

Panelists — Lisa …

An Evaluation Of Southern Nevada’S Pediatric Care Ecosystem, David Damore, Tina Quigley, Nick Fiore

Policy Briefs and Reports

In 2024, The Lincy Institute and the Nevada Health and Bioscience Corporation released a report prepared by the consulting firm Tripp Umbach detailing the case for a stand-alone children’s hospital in Southern Nevada. Shortly thereafter, Intermountain Health announced it would build Nevada’s first such facility in Las Vegas, expected to open in 2030. To complement the hospital’s development, The Lincy Institute undertook an independent evaluation of the regional pediatric care landscape. The analysis draws on secondary data and discussions with advocates, health system administrators, practitioners, and providers. The report examines:

• Fiscal, resource, and workforce challenges underlying Nevada’s poor population-level pediatric …

Credential Shortages In Higher Education Programs In Mountain West Metro Areas, 2024, Isabelle G. Graham, Kristian Thymianos, Olivia K. Cheche, William E. Brown Jr.

Economic Development & Workforce

This fact sheet reports data on workforce demand for middle-skills jobs across five high-paying occupational categories: healthcare, management, blue-collar, protective services, and STEM. The Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce report, “Missed Opportunities: Credential Shortages in Programs Aligned with High-Paying Middle-Skills Jobs in 55 US Metro Areas,” includes metro-level data on 55 metro areas in the United States in 2024.2 This fact sheet focuses on data for five Mountain West metro areas, including Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO; Las-Vegas-Henderson-Paradise, NV; Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ; Salt Lake City, UT; and Tucson, AZ.

The State Of Mental Health In The Mountain West, 2025, Cason Noll, Anirudh Polagani, Taylor Volk, Olivia K. Cheche, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Health

This fact sheet presents data on the mental health of youth and adults, as well as the availability of mental health care, across the five Mountain West states of Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah in 2025. The data are derived from "The State of Mental Health in America 2025,” originally published by Mental Health America (MHA).

Understanding Film Tax Credits In Nevada And Nationally, Michael J. Brown, David F. Damore, William E. Brown Jr.

Policy Briefs and Reports

This policy primer provides an overview of Nevada’s transferable tax credit program for film and other productions and reviews articles, reports, audits, and studies of film tax credits as a tool for economic development in the United States. This review considers a significant body of work analyzing the use of film tax credits in support of economic development. Studies and state audits often show that because film tax credits do not create the number and quality of full-time jobs necessary to merit their costs and do little to stimulate other related industries, they are a poor financial choice for state …

Nevada's Healthcare And Education Workforce Pipelines, David Damore, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Policy Briefs and Reports

With ongoing workforce shortages in K-12 education, healthcare, and mental and behavioral health—occupations central to the HEAL (health, education, administration, and literacy) economy—this brief utilizes the Nevada P-20 to Workforce Research Data System (NPWR) and data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to explore the current and projected landscape for these workforces in Nevada. Examining the demographic characteristics of those participating in focused career and technical education training and those earning relevant postsecondary credentials illuminates gender disparities in Nevada’s healthcare and education workforce pipelines. After reviewing the current state of these workforces and assessing the available NPWR data, we …

Identifying Latent Workforce Capacities For Extreme Heat Resilience: An Artificial Intelligence Assisted Approach, Jieshu Wang, Patricia Solís

Technology & Society Faculty Publications

Extreme heat events, intensified by climate change, pose critical challenges to public health, infrastructure, and workforce resilience. Despite the urgency of these challenges, there is no systematic framework to identify workforce adaptive capacities that can help build regional heat resilience. This study introduces a novel large language model assisted approach, using task-level data from the O*NET dataset, to identify workforce capacities that enhance heat resilience. By defining heat-solution tasks as activities mitigating heat impacts, protecting public health, or improving infrastructure, we classify heat-solution occupations and dual-impact occupations, which are both vulnerable to heat and critical to heat resilience. A case …

The Chemistry Workforce In The Mountain West, 2022, Sean Curry, Otoniel Ramos, Mohit Pande, Olivia K. Cheche, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Economic Development & Workforce

This fact sheet presents 2022 data on the industrial chemistry workforce in five Mountain West states: Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah. The American Chemistry Council’s (ACC’s) report, “2023 Guide to the Business of Chemistry,” offers insights into the chemistry industry’s role in the U.S. economy. This fact sheet focuses on 2022 state-level data related to the number of chemistry establishments, the number of individuals employed in the industry, and the average wages and salaries of industry workers in the Mountain West.

Projected Job Growth By 2031 In The Mountain West, Madison Dwyer, Annie Vong, Kristian Thymianos, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Economic Development & Workforce

This fact sheet examines job growth projections from 2021 to 2031 for the Mountain West states of Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah. This fact sheet also presents projected job growth data by educational level, and across selected occupational sectors. Data are sourced from the report, “After Everything: Projections of Jobs, Education, and Training Requirements through 2031,” published by the McCourt School of Public Policy’s Center on Education and the Workforce (CEW) at Georgetown University.

The State Of Mental Health In The Mountain West, 2023, Ayda Atici, Freddy Nie, Jesse M. Fager-Larsen, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Health

This fact sheet examines the state of mental health for both youth and adults and availability of mental health care in the Mountain West states of Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah. The data are retrieved from Mental Health America’s (MHA) 2023 report, The State of Mental Health in America.

The Safety Net Should Work For Working Age Adults, Lauren Bauer

Brookings Scholar Lecture Series

This lecture focuses attention on a population that is ill-served by the safety net but rarely acknowledged: low-income, working-age adults without dependents or government-determined disabilities. In this lecture, Brookings Scholar Lauren Bauer, a former Special Assistant in the Office of the Secretary at the US Department of Education, argues that a safety net that is inaccessible to ABAWDs (able-bodied adults without dependents) fails to recognize the precarious state of the low-wage labor market or how safety-net programs allow these workers to remain in the workforce. By modernizing the parameters of who qualifies for access to safety-net programs, assistance can be …

Nevada High School Students: Graduates From Unlv And Unr, 2010-2022, Madison Dwyer, Zachary Billot, Annie Vong, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Higher Education

This fact sheet reports data for individuals who earned both a high school diploma from a Nevada high school and a bachelor’s degree at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) or the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) between 2010 and 2022, as well as the race/ethnicity and gender of these graduates.

Child Care Costs In The Mountain West, 2021, Mohit Pande, Vanessa Booth, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Economic Development & Workforce

This fact sheet examines data on child care costs in five Mountain West states: Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah, from the Child Care Aware of America’s (CCAoA) report “Price of Care: 2021 Child Care Affordability.” The original report includes data on the cost of child care and the percent of yearly income allocated to child care for married and single parents. The report analyzes single family respondents and the impact of child care on work schedules. The report also provides information on the state of the child care workforce, including annual incomes of child care workers and the …

The Impact Of Leadership Turnover On Child Welfare Workforce Initiatives, Courtney Harrison, Megan Paul

QIC-Takes

Turnover among public child welfare leaders is prevalent. Across the eight QIC-WD intervention sites, leadership turnover was one of the most common implementation challenges observed by the QIC-WD team. Leadership changes can disrupt the implementation of a workforce initiative by shifting agency-level priorities, the organizational climate, or key staff.

Child welfare leaders may be appointed or hired in many different ways in different jurisdictions. In some states, the Governor appoints a cabinet-level child welfare director who oversees a stand-alone agency. This means that child welfare leadership changes follow the political election cycle with new governors appointing new agency leaders every …

Job Posting, Megan Paul, Nina Williams-Mbengue, Courtney Harrison

QIC-Tips

A job posting must be informative, clear, transparent, and appealing to potential child welfare job candidates. It should also be candidate-centric and answer questions candidates often ask, especially any key information that has turned out to be a dealbreaker for people later in the process. This QIC-Tip is designed to highlight actionable strategies to create a good job posting. Please note that the information presented is not meant to override or supersede local, state, or federal legal civil service or human resources guidance.

Think of the job posting as a marketing opportunity for your agency and highlight the positive aspects …

Measuring Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion In The Child Welfare Workforce, Quality Improvement Center For Workforce Development

QIC-Tips

Some child welfare professionals have stated that there is a critical need for systemic changes to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion, but where do child welfare agencies begin? Although change is never easy, the starting place on the journey to have a diverse, equitable, and inclusive (DEI) workforce is relatively simple. It starts with you—a child welfare supervisor, manager, or administrator. Start by considering what you think you know. Is your knowledge based on perception or data? What experiences shape your perceptions? What tools do you have to measure your workforce? Administrative data sets and surveys that gather both qualitative …

Virtual Training In Child Welfare, Penny Putnam Collins

QIC-Takes

Child welfare offices and training centers had to transition their classroom instructor-led training to virtual platforms when the pandemic hit. Some training systems were already using virtual platforms or asynchronous learning tools to deliver training content, but no agency was 100% virtual pre-pandemic. The transition was sudden and there was a steep learning curve for some trainers. Changes made when the pandemic hit may now be the new normal. This QICTake highlights what our QIC-WD sites and team members experienced as child welfare agencies shifted to, and are now embracing, virtual training. What We’re Seeing Finding the Right Tools for …

Of Boys And Men: Why The Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, And What To Do About It, Richard Reeves

Brookings Scholar Lecture Series

Boys and men are struggling. Profound economic and social changes of recent decades have many losing ground in the classroom, the workplace, and in the family. While the lives of women have changed, the lives of many men have remained the same or even deteriorated. Our attitudes, our institutions, and our laws have failed to keep up. Conservative and progressive politicians, mired in their own ideological warfare, fail to provide thoughtful solutions.

The father of three sons, a journalist, and a Brookings Institution scholar, Richard V. Reeves has spent twenty-five years worrying about boys both at home and work. His …

Supporting Virtual Supervision As Part Of A Hybrid Workforce, Quality Improvement Center For Workforce Development

QIC-Tips

More and more public child welfare agencies offer the opportunity to work in a hybrid environment, combining remote work with in-office work. This has raised questions among supervisors about how best to manage a remote workforce. Since research on virtual supervision is fairly limited relative to the popularity of remote work, studies are needed to understand the ways and conditions that influence effectiveness. Available research on remote work indicates that it is moderately associated with greater perceived autonomy and modestly associated with better supervisor relationships, performance, and job satisfaction. It was also modestly associated with decreased role stress and turnover …

What Can Child Welfare Leaders Do To Improve Job Satisfaction?, Quality Improvement Center For Workforce Development

QIC-Tips

There is a saying, “a happy worker is a productive worker” and research suggests there is a modest relationship between job satisfaction and job performance. But what can child welfare leaders do to create a satisfied, productive workforce when the work is stressful, complex, and challenging? There is a lot of evidence on what employers should be aware of among worker characteristics and the work environment that is related to higher employee job satisfaction. For example, employees who thrive at work are less likely to experience stress and burnout. Positive experiences related to coworkers, supervisors, and the organization show strong …

How Can Supervisors Support New Employees?, Quality Improvement Center For Workforce Development

QIC-Tips

When the Quality Improvement Center for Workforce Development (QIC-WD) recently asked public child welfare agency staff and leaders about their concerns related to improving the workforce, one of the questions was, “How do we support new employees?” This QIC-Tip aims to answer this question with research-informed recommendations and practical advice from the field.

The process by which newcomers make the transition from being organizational outsiders to being insiders is known as onboarding, or organizational socialization (Bauer et al., 2007). The overall goal of onboarding is to facilitate newcomer adjustment, meaning that new employees understand the key tasks of …

Growth In High-Paying Jobs: Mountain West Metros, Joshua Padilla, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Economic Development & Workforce

This fact sheet examines data from a Stessa report titled, “U.S. Cities with the Largest Growth in High-Paying Jobs.” Data are presented for 25 metros in the Mountain West (Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah).

Democratizing The Economy Or Introducing Economic Risk? Gig Work During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Daniel Auguste, Stephen Roll, Mathieu Despard

Social Policy Institute Research

Though the growth of the gig economy has coincided with increased economic precarity in the new economy, we know less about the extent to which gig work (compared with other self-employment arrangements and non-gig work) may fuel economic insecurity among American households. We fill this gap in the literature drawing on a sample of 4,756 workers from a unique national survey capturing economic hardships among non-standard workers like app-and platform-based gig and other self-employed workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Results from generalized boosted regression modeling, utilizing machine learning to account for potential endogeneity, demonstrated that gig workers experienced significantly greater …

Science And Engineering State Indicators: Mountain West States, Olivia K. Cheche, Kristian Thymianos, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Higher Education

This fact sheet examines the Science & Engineering State Indicators database from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the Mountain West states of Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah.

Employee Engagement, Megan Paul

Umbrella Summaries

What is employee engagement?

Consensus on the exact definition of employee engagement is still evolving, but commonalities involve attitudes and behaviors related to high personal investment in one’s work. One definition is “a relatively enduring state of mind referring to the simultaneous investment of personal energies in the experience or performance of work” (Christian, Garza, & Slaughter, 2011, p. 95). The most commonly used measure of engagement, the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale, assesses engagement through three factors: vigor (high energy levels and persistence), dedication (enthusiasm and inspiration), and absorption (high concentration and engrossment) (Schaufeli, Salanova, Gonzalez-Roma, & Bakker, 2002; Schaufeli, …

A Quick Guide To Workforce Analytics For Child Welfare Agencies, Quality Improvement Center For Workforce Development

Other QIC-WD Products

Child welfare agencies continue to seek resources to help them better understand their workforce data. The Quality Improvement Center for Workforce Development (QICWD) developed several valuable resources for public child welfare agencies working to build partnerships between child welfare and human resources (HR) professionals to address child welfare workforce challenges. These resources were created for jurisdictions participating in the QIC-WD Child Welfare Workforce Analytics Institutes 1.0 and 2.0 but can be used by any jurisdiction. These resources aim to help agencies build their workforce data analytics capacity and improve practice. Planning When conducting workforce analytics, agencies are encouraged to adopt …

The Child Welfare Workforce Crisis – What We’Re Hearing From The Field, Quality Improvement Center For Workforce Development

Other QIC-WD Products

The Quality Improvement Center for Workforce Development (QIC-WD) and the National Child Welfare Workforce Institute (NCWWI) in collaboration with the Capacity Building Centers for States, Tribes, and Courts, recently worked with representatives of the Children’s Bureau to listen to concerns of state child welfare and human resources (HR) leaders about the child welfare workforce. This blog post highlights what leaders (representing 29 states) described as their biggest concerns and what strategies agencies have put in place to reduce turnover and improve the applicant pool. We have also included links to information about evidence-informed efforts that could help jurisdictions address some …

Can Technology Reduce The Stress Of The Child Welfare Practitioner?, Quality Improvement Center For Workforce Development

Other QIC-WD Products

Information and communication technology (ICT) “has the potential to dramatically shift and enhance social work practice,” according to Berzin, Singer, & Chan (2015). ICT includes tools that allow users to both communicate with colleagues and clients and access, store, transmit, and manipulate information (Perron et al., 2010). Such technology integration can create practices that are more flexible, on-demand, and individualized not only to the families served, but also to the practitioner. Mobile technology, as well as other technologies (e.g., gaming, social media, robotics, wearable technologies) will enhance practice gains and result in more timely, accurate, and targeted services (Berzin, Singer, …

Assessing Your Workforce Needs, Quality Improvement Center For Workforce Development

Other QIC-WD Products

You know you have a workforce challenge… but do you know what is causing it? Many child welfare agencies have expanded recruitment efforts through social media, started using telework and flexible work schedules, and even increased wages and provided hazard pay to build and strengthen their child welfare workforce. But sometimes even the best strategies don’t fix the problem because they aren’t aligned with the underlying cause of the problem. When your child welfare workforce is understaffed or overwhelmed it is tempting to want to find an immediate fix because the need to expand the workforce is urgent. However, it …

Addressing The Disconnects Between Hr And Child Welfare, Michelle Graef, Maggie Thompson

QIC-Takes

When it comes to efforts to improve workforce outcomes, how would you describe the relationship between human resources (HR) and child welfare leadership in your agency? Is the working relationship collaborative or are the divisions siloed? Do child welfare and HR departments routinely share information, needs, data, and expertise? Is HR involved in child welfare workforce planning and decision making? These are just a few of the questions we have explored with child welfare agencies as part of our work at the QIC-WD. Overall, agency representatives have indicated that opportunities for increased collaboration exist between these departments and that closer …