GVSU ramps up programs in health care to meet rising number of health care jobs locally.

Grand Valley State University is expanding its academic programs in health care to meet the steady projected growth in health care employment for the local area. Besides launching an occupational medicine program this fall, university officials are considering the introduction of programs in speech and language in addition to undergraduate degrees in pharmacology.

In the last 10 years alone, 55 percent of the manufacturing jobs lost in the surrounding four-county area have been replaced with 13,900 jobs in the growing health care field. Within a few years, employment in health care will be the largest job sector in the region, university officials predict.

According to excerpts from the story:

Growth is predicted through 2016 in 49 out of 51 health care job categories, according to projections updated by Hari Singh, a professor of economics at GVSU’s Seidman College of Business, and Economics Chair Paul Isley.

Many categories are projected to grow at double-digit rates, driven in part by an aging population that will use more health care and growing incidence rates of chronic disease such as diabetes and asthma.

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