Health Profession Opportunity Grants (HPOG 2.0) Short-Term Impact Report

The Health Profession Opportunity Grants (HPOG) Program is designed to deliver high-quality education, training, and support services to eligible individuals for occupations in the healthcare field. ACF’s Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation oversaw an evaluation to assess the success of the HPOG 2.0 Program across the diversity of 38 local HPOG 2.0 programs implemented by the 27 non-Tribal grantees.

The Impact Evaluation uses an experimental design in which eligible program applicants are randomly assigned to either a “treatment” group that can access the local HPOG 2.0 program or a “control” group that cannot, and then compares the two groups’ average outcomes. By comparing outcomes for randomized applicants, the evaluation provides convincing evidence of the impact of the offer of HPOG 2.0.

The researchers gathered the data through participant surveys. The survey questions were as follows:
1. What is the average impact of access to a local HPOG 2.0 program on receipt of training (in general and for healthcare professions) and support services, on employment and earnings (in general and in healthcare professions), and on broader measures of well-being?
2. How does the impact of HPOG 2.0 programs vary with study members’ baseline characteristics (e.g., age, education, TANF receipt)?

The HPOG 2.0 Impact Evaluation is making an important contribution to the field’s collective knowledge about sector-based and career pathways programs. This research helps assess whether local programs responding to the HPOG 2.0 funding opportunity were individually and collectively effective in achieving its training and labor market goals for participants offered access to their services.

(This report is 95 pages long.)

Compared with study members who were interested in local HPOG 2.0 programs but were denied access, through 15 months after random assignment:

• Those study members given access to a local HPOG 2.0 program are more likely (by 16 percentage points) to have made educational progress—defined as having completed training by earning a credential or having been continuously enrolled in training. This favorable impact on the evaluation’s short-term confirmatory outcome indicates that HPOG 2.0 is on track to achieve its goals.
• Collectively, HPOG 2.0 programs have a significant impact on each of the four secondary outcomes in the educational progress domain, including an increase (by 17 points) in the percentage of earning any new credential from either a training provider or some other authority such as a state board); an increase (9 points) in the percentage earning exam-based certifications or licenses from authorities other than training providers; an increase (10 points) in the percentage completing six or more months of training, and an increase (1.4 months) in months of training.
• Collectively, HPOG 2.0 programs increase (by 3 percentage points) career connectedness—defined as being employed full-time, training full-time, or at least part-time in both employment and training. Programs also increase self-assessed career progress (by 0.2 points on a four-point scale; an impact equivalent to an effect size of 0.22 standard deviations, which implies that 59 percent of the treatment group has a higher level of career progress than the median value in the control group).
• Collectively, HPOG 2.0 programs have no detected impacts on earnings, on any employment, or on employment with health insurance benefits.

• Last Updated:
• Created:
• Resource Publication Date: 2022
• Author(s): Klerman, J.; Judkins, D.; Prenovitz, S.; Locke, G.
• Funding Source: U.S. Department of Labor
• Resource Availability: Publicly available
• Posted by: Wesley Peterson
• Posted in: Workforce System Strategies