Human Resources for Health
.jpg "Guyana Health Center. Credit: Julie Doherty")
Challenge
In many developing countries, lack of health care providers is seen as the primary bottleneck to health prevention, care, and treatment services. In many of the countries where Health Systems 20/20 works, the number of health workers must be tripled to steadily progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Over the past decade, several circumstances have called attention to the shortage of human resources for health (HRH) and related problems:
- The lack of trained health care providers has been revealed as a root cause of the slow scale-up of global initiatives to fight HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
- The HIV/AIDS pandemic has depleted the health workforce of many countries, just when the need to scale up treatment calls for more health workers
- Civil conflict and weak economies have resulted in health workers fleeing to safer cities, or to different countries that can pay for service provision
.jpg "Kenya Minister with National Health Account reports. Credit: Susna De")
Approach
How can Cote d’Ivoire ensure health workers return to the war-torn north region? Will Ethiopia be able to expand provision of HIV services? Health Systems 20/20 uses its expertise and experience in HRH, health system strengthening, and heath care financing, to provide evidence about what works in HRH improvement interventions to address such questions. To do so, Health Systems 20/20 actively works to strengthen three primary HRH components:
- Workforce planning ensures that there is a sufficient number of health workers to meet service delivery plans based on the current stock of workers, those expected to join the system through education or recruitment, and those expected to leave the system through retirement or attrition
- Workforce development strengthens pre-service education and in-service training of health workers
- Workforce management builds management capacity to supervise and implement simple, client-focused work processes and a establish a motivating work environment
Health Systems 20/20 and Human Resources for Health Brief
.jpg "Nurses in Ugo, Nigeria")
Eight Strategies that Strengthen Health Systems Worldwide
Health Systems 20/20 and Human Resources for Health
Oct 2011 | Health Systems 20/20 | Brief
Health Systems 20/20 Project Brief
Money Talks—Examining Health Worker Compensation in Uganda
Nov 9 2011In countries with limited resources for health, attracting and retaining health workers is an ever-present challenge. Monetary compensation plays a significant role in turnover; however, information about health worker wages, benefits, allowances, and bonuses is limited. To better understand this issue, Health Systems 20/20 and partners are kicking off a multi-country health worker compensation study in Uganda.
More...Health Systems 20/20 to Facilitate First Comprehensive Medical School Curricula Review in Decades
Feb 10 2011Bolstering Health Systems from the Inside Out—A Look at Lesotho
Oct 26 2010Workforce Planning Tool in Use by MOH
Jun 7 2010The past year marked significant efforts by the Health Systems 20/20’s Workforce Planning activity team to finalize the Workforce Planning Tool (WPT). The WPT is an Access-based application developed to assist Egypt’s Ministry of Health (MOH) to estimate health facilities’ staffing gaps.
More...Meeting Health Workforce Needs in Luxor, Egypt
Dec 14 2009
The Egyptian Ministry of Health (MOH) is working to strengthen its capacity to roll out and sustain health sector reforms. Challenges faced include excess workforce capacity in some facilities, imbalances in the geographic and specialty distributions of health workers, and sub-optimal quality of the graduating workforce.
Capacity Building
