Latest Resources

Training the Health Workforce: Scaling Up, Saving Lives

This article describes the work of the Task Force for Scaling Up Education and Training for Health Workers, which was established to create to create practical proposals for a massive increase in the education and training of health workers, as part of a systematic effort to build up health systems in developing countries. [adapted from author]

Estimated Financial and Human Resources Requirements for the Treatment of Malaria in Malawi

The main aim of the study was to estimate how much clinician-time that malaria exacts on Malawi’s Ministry of Health resources. It estimates the proportion of finances that anti-malarial medications exact on the country’s health budget and determines whether the Malawi public health sector had adequate human resources to provide treatment. [adapted from author]

It's Like Giving Birth to the Sick Person for the Second Time: Family Caregivers' Perspectives on Providing Care

The general aim of this paper is to add to the limited research on family caregivers, and specifically to enable a better understanding of the actual experience of providing care for ill adults within the home in the context of HIV/AIDS, using qualitative research findings from a KwaZulu-Natal study. [from author]

Key Factors Influencing High-Performing Healthcare Sites in Low-Resource Settings

This study focused on the positive traits and strategies exhibited by high-performing facilities to determine how to improve performance at average and low-performing sites. [from author]

Medical Dialogue: How to Kick-Start a Joint AIDS Response by Health Workers and Traditional Healers

This publication provides information on the medical dialogue, a method formulated to address the recommendation for collaboration between biomedical practitioners and traditional healers and the integration of traditional medicine into public health care to respond to AIDS. [adapted from author]

Strengthening Management in Low-Income Countries: Lessons from Uganda: a Case Study on Management of Health Services Delivery

In an initiative to collate experiences on management development in low resource settings, WHO carried out case studies to explore management development approaches and how these impacted managerial and service delivery performance. [adapted from author]

Crisis in Human Resources for Health Care and the Potential of a Retired Workforce: Case Study of the Independent Midwifery Sector in Tanzania

This article examines one new element of non-government provision in Tanzania: small-scale independent midwifery practices. Because of their location and emphasis on personalized care, small-scale independent practices run by retired midwives could potentially increase rates of skilled attendance at delivery at peripheral level. [from author]

Human Resources for Health: Overview

Liverpool Associates in Tropical Health has been teaching, researching and consulting in HRH throughout the changing global and country contexts for almost two decades. This overview paper highlights the changes that we have observed over time, in both the attention paid to workforce issues and the types of activities that we have seen. [from author]

Assessing the Human Resource Capacity for Implementation of the National Plan of Action for Orphans and Vulnerable Children: Process Description and Tool Library

The purpose of this document is to provide a process, methodology and tools for assessing government human resource capacity to lead and manage an effective implementation of the NPA.

Attracting Psychiatrists to a Rural Area 10 Years On

In rural areas across Australia the recruitment and retention of adequate numbers of medical specialists, including psychiatrists, has been a long outstanding problem. Latrobe Regional Hospital reached a major crisis in 1994, with only one psychiatrist and a large number of vacancies. This led to a focus on the recruitment and retention of psychiatrists in order to improve this essential element of the workforce. [from abstract]

You Have to Face Your Mistakes in the Street: the Contextual Keys that Shape Health Service Access and Health Workers' Experiences in Rural Areas

Rural healthcare provision is limited in many areas because of workforce recruitment and retention issues. Pharmacists and social workers are examples of allied health professionals who play vital roles in the provision of rural health care. Personal factors including an individual’s fit with a local community and their professional role were explored to determine the way they affect access to rural health care. [from abstract]

Human Resource for Health (HRH) Strategic Planning

Strategic planning helps an organization make fundamental decisions about its human resources by taking a long-range view of what it hopes to achieve and, in broad terms, how. [author’s description]

Positive Practice Environments

Positive practice environments are settings that support excellence and decent work. In particular, they strive to ensure the health, safety and personal well-being of staff, support quality patient care and improve the motivation, productivity and performance of individuals and organisations. [from author]

Looking to the Future: Improving Family Planning Access and Quality in Rwanda

The Capacity Project is applying an integrated strategy to strengthen family planning (FP) and reproductive health. The project is helping the Ministry of Health develop the capacity of the clinical workforce to provide a full range of FP methods and services at 13 hospitals and 146 health centers. [adapted from author]

Leadership Can Be Learned, But How Is It Measured?

This document asks how leadership contributes to measurable changes in organizational performance and how to evaluate the outcomes of leadership development programs in developing countries.

Linking Up: Creating a Complete Picture of Swaziland's Health Workforce

In order to gain an understanding of the total health workforce in Swaziland, The Capacity Project worked with senior leaders of the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare to develop a program to strengthen the country’s human resources information systems. [from author]

Monitoring the Health Workforce: Measurement Issues and Tools

This brief provides a list of facility-based data collection tools that have been developed by the World Health Organization and other partners. The resources can be used to meet a wide range of specific information needs on human resources in health systems. [adapted from summary]

Regional Core Health Data Initiative: Table Generator System

This database can be used to produce tables of health indicator data according to year, country within the Americas, and indicator type. Human Resources for Health indicators are included in the “Resources, services, and coverage” section. The available data is from 1995-2007.

Intent to Migrate Among Nursing Students in Uganda: Measures of the Brain Drain in the Next Generation of Health Professionals

This study explores the views of nursing students in Uganda to assess their views on professional practice options and their intentions to migrate to wealthier countries. The surveys show that most students would like to work outside of Uganda. The authors conclude that nursing schools may want to recruit students desiring work in rural areas or public practice to lead to a more stable workforce in Uganda. [adapted from author]

What if We Decided to Take Care of Everyone Who Needed Treatment? Workforce Planning in Mozambique Using Simulation of Demand for HIV/AIDS Care

One of the most significant challenges in fighting the AIDS epidemic in Southern Africa is securing the health care workforce to deliver care in settings where the manpower is already in short supply. The authors produced a demand-driven staffing model based on treatment protocols for HIV-positive patients that adhere to Mozambican guidelines.

Health Human Resources Modelling: Challenging the Past, Creating the Future

This document reports on the findings of three projects in Canada that link population health needs to health human resource planning, to illustrate the value and challenges in using health human resource data to inform policy decisions on nursing productivity and to generate evidence based retention policies to guide nursing workforce sustainability. [adapted from summary]

Linking Family Planning with Postabortion Services in Egypt: Testing the Feasibility, Acceptability and Effectiveness of Two Models of Integration

This research study was undertaken to test the feasibility, acceptability, and effectiveness of two models of integrating family planning services with postabortion services.

Task Shifting May Prove Key to Tackling Infectious Diseases

Task shifting, a process whereby medical tasks are delegated to less specialized health-care workers, provides one mechanism to address some of the shortfalls of many health care systems. This article advocates for increased task shifting in health care systems, especially in the developing world. [adapted from author]

Clinical Peripherality: Development of a Peripherality Index for Rural Health Services

The configuration of rural health services is influenced by geography. Rural health practitioners provide a broader range of services to smaller populations scattered over wider areas or more difficult terrain than their urban counterparts. This has implications for training and quality assurance of outcomes. This exploratory study describes the development of a “clinical peripherality” indicator that has potential application to remote and rural general practice communities for planning and research purposes. [from introduction]

Staffing Remote Rural Areas in Middle- and Low-income Countries: a Literature Review of Attraction and Retention

This is a review of the literature on attracting and retaining health workers. The findings suggest that recruitment and retention strategies are usually not comprehensive and often limited to addressing a single or limited number of factors. Because of the complex interaction of factors impacting attraction and retention, there is a strong argument to be made for bundles of interventions which include attention to living situations, working conditions and environments, and professional development opportunities. [adapted from author]