Health Profession Opportunity Grants 2.0: Final Annual Report

The purpose of this Final Annual Report is to summarize the HPOG 2.0 Program participants’ activities, outcomes, and characteristics. This report builds on five prior annual reports. The report updates all past annual reports and adds information on variation across grantees in participant characteristics, healthcare training offered by career pathway level, participation in basic skills training, and receipt of support services.

• By the end of HPOG 2.0, grantees had collectively enrolled 40,448 participants, 110 percent of the cumulative enrollment goal. This was despite monthly enrollment (as well as healthcare trainings started and supports received) falling dramatically in response to the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic starting in March 2020.

• The majority of HPOG participants were women in their 20s and 30s, many of whom had one or more dependent children. Most participants had household incomes of less than $20,000 and 19 percent were receiving TANF at intake, consistent with HPOG 2.0’s focus on serving individuals receiving TANF and other adults with low-incomes.

• Almost half of HPOG 2.0 participants had prior healthcare work experience at intake and one third had some prior college credit or a post-secondary degree.

• Across all grantees, 81 percent of participants started healthcare occupational training. For most participants, entry-level was their highest level of training, although 37 percent of participants took a higher level of training at some point.

• Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) training was the only training offered by all 32 grantees, and 30 percent of participants took it, much more than any other type of training. Just 6 percent of participants took a Registered Nurse (RN) training.

• Almost half of participants took basic skills training, although participation varied across grantees depending on the needs of participants and grantee program design.

• HPOG 2.0 paid the training tuition (in whole or in part) for 83 percent of participants. Sources other than HPOG, such as Pell Grants, funded the remainder of participants’ training tuition.

• Almost all participants received academic supports, about half received personal/logistical supports, and one-third received employment assistance supports.

• Of participants who started a healthcare training, more than three-quarters (78 percent) completed at least one healthcare training by the end of HPOG 2.0. More than two-thirds (73 percent) of participants who completed healthcare training earned a professional license or third-party certification.

• Many of the trainings with high completion rates were entry-level and relatively short, such as Personal Care Aide training with the highest rate of completion at 91 percent. The lowest completion rates were for RN training (52 percent), a relatively long and advanced training that also had the highest rate (20 percent) of participants still in training at the end of HPOG 2.0.

• Of participants completing healthcare training, two thirds (68 percent) started a job or were promoted on an existing job in healthcare. Across all participants who obtained healthcare jobs or promotions after enrollment in HPOG 2.0, almost half earned $15 an hour or more. Another half earned between $10 and $15 an hour despite the HPOG 2.0 goal for participants to find in-demand and well-paying healthcare jobs.

• Almost two thirds (63 percent) of HPOG 2.0 participants showed career progress, as measured by attaining at least one or more of the following: successfully preparing for and completing healthcare training; starting and completing healthcare training; or completing a healthcare training and gaining a new job or promotion in healthcare.

The data in this report come from the HPOG 2.0 Participant Accomplishment and Grant Evaluation System (PAGES), a participant tracking and management system that included data on participant characteristics, engagement in programs, and training and employment outcomes. PAGES also included information on the activities and supports grantees offered and participants received. Grantee program staff entered data in PAGES. The grantees each submitted semi-annual and annual Performance Progress Reports (PPR) to ACF using data entered into PAGES; the PPR data were also used for this final annual report.

Nathan Sick and Pamela Loprest. (2022). Health Profession Opportunity Grants 2.0: Final Annual Report, OPRE Report 2022-228. Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.