The National Forum of State Nursing Workforce Centers honored the NC Center on the Workforce for Health with its Excellence in Innovation by an Organization Award, for the Center’s Health Talent Alliance (HTA) initiative.

HTA is a statewide partnership between the Center, NC Chamber Foundation and NC Area Health Education Centers (AHEC) that helps address North Carolina’s health workforce challenges. The HTA conducts an annual workforce survey and data analysis that provides regional employers and educators with the insights they need to develop informed, effective solutions to address current and future workforce challenges.

The Center Director Andy MacCracken accepted the award along with Emily McCartha, Center Senior Policy Analyst, and Jill Forcina, Center Nurse Advisor and NC AHEC Director of Education and Nursing and Katie Fitzpatrick, NC AHEC Nursing Program Manager, at the Forum’s annual conference in Minneapolis, Minn.

“We are honored to receive this recognition from our peers across the country,” said MacCracken following the conference. “This award reflects the unique contributions of so many regional and state partners and is a testament to the power of collaboration and our collective commitment to strengthening North Carolina’s health workforce.”

The Center met the following five criteria to receive the award:

1. Innovative Research or Program Development

The Center was recognized for its health workforce data survey that is now in its third year.The analysis estimates paths to close annual health workforce talent deficits and leverages data submitted by employers and health education programs to identify opportunities and challenges based on position vacancy rates, churn rates, and educational outcomes. The analysis focuses on registered nurses (RNs), licensed practical nurses (LPNs), and certified nursing assistants (CNAs), and medical assistants. The findings, published in a suite of regional and state reports, provide strong indicators on the current state of North Carolina’s health workforce and the progress being made to address ongoing shortages.

2. Development of Unique or Creative Educational Programs to Support Nursing Students, New Graduates, or Current Nurses

Through HTA, the NC Center has helped partners codesign innovative educational approaches that strengthen the nursing pipeline. These include strategies to expand clinical instruction capacity, develop new pathways into nursing, and create streamlined transitions from training to employment. Because these solutions are developed collaboratively with employers, colleges, and regional stakeholders equally represented, they are responsive to real practice needs. Examples include employer-supported clinical expansion strategies, target pathways for high-need nursing roles, and models that support nurses reentering the workforce. Each approach is built with shared ownership, ensuring that programs directly support students, new graduates, and practicing nurses across the state.

3. Integration of Technology or Innovative Teaching Methods in Nursing Training

The Center’s leadership has enabled the HTA to integrate modern workforce and training technologies into regional planning and educational design. HTA partners use shared data dashboards, real time labor market signals, and digital workforce planning tools to align nursing education with employer needs.

These technologies help colleges adjust curricula, identify high priority clinical skills, anticipate demand for specialty areas and plan for future clinical placement capacity. By embedding data and digital tools in decision making, the HTA supports more efficient planning, stronger alignment with practice expectations, and training experiences that prepare nurses for contemporary care environments.

4. Programs that Respond Effectively to Emerging Healthcare Trends and Challenges

The NC Center’s facilitative role ensures that the HTA collaborative can respond quickly to new challenges and emerging trends. Because partners meet regularly, share data and solutions, and engage directly with employers, they can identify practice changes early and adapt educational strategies accordingly. The ability to rapidly coordinate across systems allows the HTA to remain relevant and proactive as the healthcare environment evolves and effective solutions are identified.

5. Programs that Replicable, Scalable, and Publishable

HTA is built on the well-established Talent Pipeline Management framework, a nationally recognized approach that has been successfully applied in multiple industries to align education and training with employer demand. HTA is an example of how TPM can be tailored to fit the available partners and challenges in diverse work sectors.

Beyond tailoring TPM to the state of NC, each region also tailors the information and approach provided centrally to their local workforce context. The combination of statewide consistency and regional customization make the model highly adaptable and exportable. Because the work is grounded in shared data, employer engagement and collaborative planning, the resulting programs are well positioned for publication and dissemination. The HTA model can be readily replicated in other states, and early outcomes demonstrate its potential to produce scalable and sustainable improvements in the nursing workforce pipeline.

Work on the 2026 HTA survey data analysis is underway, and results will be available in the fall. To learn more about HTA or the active regional collaboratives hosted NC AHEC regions, click here.