Post-Conference Summit

Building a Health Workforce That Stays: Optimizing Retention and Return in California

Time: Tuesday, March 31, 1-4pm

Location: Sheraton Grand Hotel, Wiltern BC

The Social Mission Alliance is convening interprofessional leaders from across California’s health professions continuum for a three-hour post-conference summit on March 31, 2026. The theme of the Summit is Building a Health Workforce That Stays: Optimizing Retention and Return in California.

The summit will focus on a critical workforce challenge: the need of a coordinated strategy to understand, prevent, and reverse avoidable attrition among health professionals, particularly those serving underserved communities in our state. Participants will work collaboratively to identify policy and practice gaps and to develop two to three pilot-ready, cross-institutional interventions that can be tested and scaled. Anticipated outcomes include the launch of a coordinated, post-conference learning collaborative to advance shared strategies and the development of two white papers or articles to disseminate findings and recommendations to broader audiences.

Objectives

By the conclusion of the Summit, participants will:

  1. Develop a shared understanding of where and why avoidable attrition occurs from pre-med to early practice and its impact
  2. Identify actionable strategies at the level of educators, institutions, community partners, and/or system-level leaders related to retention, persistence, well-being, and return to the profession and/or to California or the local community

Space is limited. Please contact lbutler@gwu.edu if interested.