Knowledge Platform
The Integration of Immigrant Health Professionals: Looking beyond the COVID-19 Crisis
This issue brief looks at how the underutilized professional expertise and cultural and linguistic skills of internationally trained health professionals (and some U.S.-trained professionals) could be better leveraged to meet current and future demand for care. This includes about 270,000 underemployed or out-of-work immigrant and refugee health professionals, according to MPI estimates. The brief also looks at the promise and pitfalls of efforts early in the pandemic to boost the ranks of available health workers by creating opportunities for internationally trained professionals to practice during the health emergency. These efforts offer important lessons for building a more flexible and resilient health-care workforce ahead.