How Did Hurricane Helene Impact the Health Workforce in North Carolina?

Authors: Brianna Lombardi, Monica Jimenez, Erin Fraher

In September 2024, Hurricane Helene caused significant damage across many counties in western North Carolina (NC), and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) designated disaster areas in 28 NC counties. In a previous blog post, we examined the size and composition of the health workforce in these counties prior to Hurricane Helene (2023) to provide a benchmark from which to monitor changes in access to health professionals in communities impacted by the storm. A new blog post uses licensure data from 21 health professions in the NC Health Professions Data System (HPDS) to examine changes in health workforce supply relative to population in the 28 disaster counties compared with the state’s 72 non-disaster counties, one year before the storm in 2023 compared to one year after the hurricane in 2025.