This resource from the Global Health Workforce Alliance lays outlines a policy agenda for member states on how to drive progress toward a global strategy on human resources for health for all. The agenda is organized into four objectives, under which countries can find a series of intersectoral policy options for taking action and milestones to help assess progress toward each objective. In particular, the agenda includes recommendations for how to build the institutional capacity and strengthen data to optimize the health workforce and accelerate progress towards UHC and the SDGs.
Tags: Key principles, Competencies, Skill mix, Quality assurance and regulation, Education and training, Recruitment, deployment, and retention
This guideline was developed to provide countries with the best global evidence on optimizing community health workers programs as part of a comprehensive PHC workforce. It contains practical guidance on how to effectively improve the design, implementation, performance, and evaluation of community health worker programs. In particular, it details policy and system enablers required to strengthen education, deployment, performance, and integration into the broader health system.
Tags: Key principles, Competencies, Skill mix, Quality assurance and regulation, Education and training, Recruitment, deployment, and retention
This report examines a series of case studies from six organizations - Hope Through Health, Last Mile Health, Living Goods, Muso, Partners in Health, and Possible - and proposes a set of best principles for how community health workers can be successfully integrated into national health systems.
Tags: Skill mix, Education and training, Recruitment, deployment, and retention
The Global Health Workforce Network was established as a global platform for stakeholders to work collaboratively toward the effective implementation of comprehensive and coherent workforce policies in line with global best practices. In particular, the network focuses on the development and dissemination of products that facilitate better alignment of workforce education and deployment with population, health systems, and health labour market needs and the scale up of socially accountable education.
Tags: Key principles, Quality assurance and regulation, Education and training, Recruitment, deployment, and retention
This website is the home of USAID and PEPFAR’s Human Resources for Health 2030 initiative, created to support countries in developing a workforce that is capacitated to improve health outcomes in their country context. It contains practical lessons and evidence-based solutions to workforce challenges in four areas: performance and productivity of the health workforce; number, skill mix, and competency of the health workforce; human resources for health leadership and governance capacity; and sustainability of investment in human resources for health.
Tags: Key principles, Skill mix, Education and training, Recruitment, deployment, and retention
This document provides a set of global standards for postgraduate family medicine education. While countries will need to adapt these global standards to their local environment and local needs, they may be used by institutions and education programs to support quality improvement in family medicine postgraduate education, including self-assessment and program quality improvement; new program development; peer review; and recognition and accreditation.
Tags: Quality assurance and regulation, Competencies, Education and training
The World Organization of Family Doctors (WONCA) launched the Rural Medical Education Guidebook to provide a resource for stakeholders to obtain practical strategies and ideas for training health care workers for rural education and practice. In particular, the guide provides detailed information and implementation guidance related to resourcing rural medical education and practice, providing professional and technical support and development, and undergraduate and postgraduate medical education training and development models.
Tags: Quality assurance and regulation, Competencies, Education and training
This document provides countries with a monitoring strategy to track progress and performance, evaluate impact, and ensure accountability for strengthening the health workforce using a set of core indicators and related measurement strategies. It also guides countries through a series of plans and actions for assessing and strengthening workforce recruitment, distribution, retention, and productivity that are paired with indicators for monitoring progress toward these goals.
Tags: Key principles, Quality assurance and regulation, Education and training, Recruitment, deployment, and retention
This book draws on the lessons, knowledge, and data gathered by the World Bank’s Africa Region Human Resources for Health Program to examine the health human resource crisis in the context of Africa’s labor markets. The book’s four parts provide information and tools on health workforce analysis, the distribution of health workforce, performance of the health workforce, and education and training of health workers. The featured case studies offer tangible lessons from a variety of countries in the region that have achieved improvements in human resources for health.
Tags: Competencies, Quality assurance and regulation, Education and training, Recruitment, deployment, and retention
This handbook provides managers, researchers, and policymakers with a comprehensive and standardized reference for monitoring and evaluating human resources for health. Using an analytical framework, the handbook presents countries with strategic options for improving the health workforce information and evidence base, and uses country experiences to highlight approaches that have worked.
Tags: Key principles, Quality assurance and regulation
This paper examines human resources for health policy lessons from four countries that have achieved sustained improvements in accelerating progress toward universal health coverage - Brazil, Ghana, Mexico, and Thailand. For each country, the paper identifies the key actions and lessons that helped to accelerate progress toward universal health coverage through the lens of health workforce availability, accessibility, acceptability, and quality. The paper uses country experiences to demonstrate actions that support improvements in human resources for health, with special attention to equity and efficiency.
Tags: Key principles, Quality assurance and regulation, Recruitment, deployment, and retention
This action plan was developed as a part of a joint intersectoral programme of work across the International Labor Organization, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the World Health Organization to support countries in the effective implementation of the WHO’s global strategy on human resources for health. It provides detailed information and guidance related to the implementation of intersectoral, collaborative and integrated approaches and country-driven action for sustainable investments, institutional-capacity building, and transformative policy action and practice.
Tags: Key principles, Financing and policy, Data and evidence, Recruitment, deployment, and retention
This report, produced by the WHO Global Health Workforce Network’s Gender Equity Hub, examines gender and equity in the health workforce. Four thematic areas guide countries in identifying and addressing issues of leadership; decent work free from all forms of discrimination, harassment, including sexual harassment; gender pay gap; and occupational segregation using gender-transformative policies and measures. The report concludes with key messages and policy recommendations that may be used to address gender inequity in the health workforce and support progress toward global targets such as UHC.
Tags: Key principles, Recruitment, deployment, and retention
This report, produced by the High-Level Commission on Health Employment and Economic Growth, was developed to call attention to the social and economic benefits of the health workforce. It proposes ten recommendations and five immediate actions to transform the health and social workforce and enable change for the achievement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Tags: Key principles, Financing and policy
This report was released as part of the Technical Series accompanying the Astana Declaration of 2018. It provides an updated definition for PHC workforce, describes the current state of the PHC workforce globally, outlines the challenges facing the workforce, and proposes a series of policy directions and levers for improving the PHC workforce. The document also includes a series of case studies highlight PHC workforce improvements in various countries.
Tags: Key principles, Financing and policy, Competencies
This set of tools was developed to facilitate the implementation of the National Health Workforce Accounts (NHWA), a system for improving the availability, quality, and use of health workforce data. It contains a set of 78 core indicators that provide a comprehensive overview of the dynamics of a country’s health workforce, described in detail in the NWHA Handbook, and an implementation guide that offers a series of recommendations for improved use and collection of relevant data.
Tags: Data and evidence
This brief examines gender equity in the social and health workforce at the global level based on an analysis of WHO National Health Workforce Accounts data over the last 18 years and highlights key policy options for stakeholders to consider to achieve gender equity in health.
Tags: Key principles, Data and evidence, Financing and policy, Recruitment, deployment, and retention
To support the recruitment, deployment, and retention of workforce in remote and rural areas, this document outlines a series of 16 evidence-based recommendations. It also provides guidance for policymakers on how to choose and implement the most appropriate interventions for their context and how to monitor and evaluate impact over time.
Tags: Recruitment, deployment, and retention
HealthWISE, produced by the International Labor Organization and WHO, is a participatory quality improvement tool for use in health facilities to improve occupational safety and health, personnel management, and environmental health.
Tags: Quality assurance and regulation
This manual guides users through the methodology and process of applying the Workload Indicators of Staffing Need (WISN) method, a human resource management tool. The manual is designed to provide a wide range of managers with a systematic way to make staffing decisions that optimize management of their human resources. It contains practical guidance on defining the objectives and scope of using WISN, its implementation, and applying WISN to determine optimal staff requirements based on workloads.
Tags: Quality assurance and regulation, Recruitment, deployment, and retention
UpToDate is a clinical-evidence based resource that clinicians can use to improve decision making, care delivery, and patient outcomes. It provides immediate access to key medical education resources, including evidence-based clinical content and actionable recommendations for effective diagnosis and treatment. Users can learn more and apply for a subscription through the Better Evidence Project at Ariadne Labs.
Tags: Competencies, Education and training, Data and evidence, Quality assurance and regulation
Exemplars in Global Health aims to help public health decision-makers around the world identify and analyze countries that have made extraordinary progress in important health outcomes and disseminate the key takeaways. The lessons and topics contained in this growing list of Exemplar narratives will be a resource to leaders committed to improving health and achieving success in their countries, including via Community Health Workers. Users can learn more about Community Health Workers and Community Health Worker exemplars on the Exemplars in Global Health webpage.
Tags: Data and evidence, Responsiveness to people
This paper details a conceptual framework for measuring community health worker performance within primary health care systems in LMICs, developed in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, USAID, and UNICEF. In addition to a framework, it includes a list of indicators and measurment considerations for monitoring CHW performance. Adoption of the proposed framework andassociated indicators is intended to support program implementars to improve CHW programmatic effectiveness, strengthen accountability to national community health systems, and drive programmatic quality improvement.
Tags: Quality assurance and regulation, Data and evidence, Community-based care
In light of the increasing demand for primary care services and the changing scope of health care, it is important to consider how the principles of primary care are taught in medical school. The authors organized this blueprint into three domains: care management, specific areas of content expertise, and understanding the role of primary care in the health care system. The proposed curriculum incorporates important core features of doctoring, which are often affirmed by all disciplines but owned by none. The authors argue that primary care educators are natural stewards of this curriculum content and can ensure that it complements and strengthens all aspects of undergraduate medical education.
Tags: Education and training
"This document provides an overview of challenges facing health care workers in fragile and conflict-affected states during pandemics and presents strategies to support these countries in strengthening and protecting their health care workers to respond to COVID-19 pandemic and other public health crises. "
Tags: Education and training, Data and evidence, Financing and policy, Recruitment deployment and retention, Quality assurance and regulation, Community-based care, COVID-19, Resilience of health systems, Fragile and conflict affected settings, Safety
This article discusses current and prospective roles CHWs play in improving access to healthcare during and after pandemics. Specifically, it describes how health systems could expand the roles and responsibilities of CHWs to improve health security and community-level resilience.
Tags: COVID-19, Community-based care
This policy and practice brief discusses the six main action fields in health workforce management as identified by the Human Resources for Health Action Framework: leadership; finance; policy; education; partnership; and human resources management systems. It also "identifies and describe examples of effective practices in the development of the health workforce, highlighting the breadth of issues that policy-makers and planners should consider" in response to workforce challenges in their context.
Tags: Financing and policy, Education and training, Quality assurance and regulation, UHC
"This briefing paper highlights some of the main findings and recommendations from a wide-ranging series of studies on human resources for health conducted by ReBUILD since 2011. This brief is one of a series of ReBUILD papers addressing key questions on health systems strengthening in settings affected by conflict or crisis. The purpose of these briefing papers is to bring together current knowledge and research in order to inform decision-makers, implementers, researchers and other stakeholders in this area."
Tags: Financing and policy, Fragile and conflict affected settings
"Drawing from practitioner expertise across four WHO regions, this article outlines the targeted actions needed at different stages of the pandemic to achieve the following goals: (1) PROTECT healthcare workers, (2) INTERRUPT the virus, (3) MAINTAIN existing healthcare services while surging their capacity, and (4) SHIELD the most vulnerable from socioeconomic shocks."
Tags: Financing and policy, COVID-19, Community-based care
"The State of the world’s nursing 2020 report provides the latest, most up-to-date evidence on and policy options for the global nursing workforce. It also presents a compelling case for considerable – yet feasible – investment in nursing education, jobs, and leadership...The primary chapters of the report outline the role and contributions of nurses with respect to the WHO “triple billion” targets; the health labour market and workforce policy levers to address the challenges to nurses working to their full potential; the findings from analysis of National Health Workforce Account (NHWA) data from 191 Member States and progress in relation to the projected shortfall of nurses by 2030; and forward-looking policy options for an agenda to strengthen the nursing workforce to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals, improve health for all, and strengthen the primary health care workforce on our journey towards universal health coverage."
Tags: Education and training, Financing and policy, Recruitment deployment and retention, UHC
"""This paper provides an introduction to the terms and
tools of labour market analysis for those with little or no
formal training in economics."" It connects labor market principles with real-world case studies from LMICs in an effort to equip human resource practitioners with the data and knowledge to begin their own empirical examination of labor markets in LMICs."
Tags: Data and evidence, Financing and policy