"How did you leearn about us?"

When your students and customers answer this question, they give you valuable feedback to help you assess the impact of your various advertising efforts.

Schools and colleges using Boston Reed's data system CDI ("Comprehensive Data Infrastructure") now have a means for collectiing this key information. New features allow schools to ask enrollees this question on the registration page when students are doing online registration. The school can completely customize the list of answers that students may select from.

Once this "learned about" information is collected, we give you a tool for reporting it out for any date range you choose. We also include the 'Learned About' responses in the form of a filter in the Contact Tool for direct email marketing. So you can, for example, send a targeted email specifically to those students who learned about you from a radio ad campaign you ran and signed up for the first time between August 20 and September 15.

(And, if you haven't been to the Contact Tools window lately, you will find that it now has a built-in HTML editor to help you send out emails with eye-appeal!)

To see documentaqtion for using these "Learned About" features, go to the CDI Help Table of Contents. In the section, "Doing Business on the Web," see article number 9, The "Learned About" Report.

If you are not using Boston Reed's data system now, on our website you can get an Introduction to CDI.

Like almost everything in CDI, these ideas came from administrators like you who use the applicaton. We always listen to our customers to discover what features would make your life easier and make your programs more manageable.

As the article indicates, there's no such thing as a dead-end job in healthcare!' This article on the 'Explore Health Careers' Site gives excellent examples of career ladders in healthcare.

Additionally, "Advancing in Health and Health Care Careers - Rung by Rung" is a good resource for employers looking for examples of how to initiate a work-based learning environment to allow incumbant workers to pursue career ladder programs.

Jobs to Careers is a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in collaboration with the Hitachi Foundation and the United States Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration and with technical assistance provided by Jobs for the Future.

While all industries are projected to show major shortages of college-educated workers in California by 2020; the shortage has already hit the health care sector. And it's not just nursing. "Allied health" practitioners make up 60% of the health workforce with technical occupations such as medical assistants, pharmacy technicians, respiratory therapists and the like.

The Golden State will soon be hit by the 'double whammy' of California's aging population and workforce, with a generation of highly skilled Baby Boomers retiring from the industry. Despite having a projected growth in population in the coming years, the study found that California lags behind the rest of the nation in providing an adequate health care workforce.   The first study of it's kind in a decade, the Executive Summary of the report outlines the factors driving the demand of the allied healthcare workforce as well as illustrates the factors limiting the supply. The full report defines the allied healthcare workforce, the projected growth in California, limiting supply and demand factors and an analysis of nursing as it relates to the role with allied healthcare.

Stakeholders across the state overwhelmingly cited limited educational capacity in allied health education programs as the greatest factor restricting workforce supply. The study also offers policy recommendations both specific to health care training programs and to overall educational performance.

The research was funded by Kaiser Permanente and the California Wellness Foundation and conducted by Health Workforce Solutions, LLC. The study was sponsored by the Campaign for College Opportunity.