Latest Resources

Indonesia launched the national health insurance program - Jaminan Kesehatan National (JKN) - on January 1, 2014, and aims to achieve universal health coverage (UHC) by 2019. Achieving UHC means not only increasing the number of people covered but also expanding the benefits package and ensuring financial protection. Although the JKN benefits package is comprehensive, a key challenge related to the capacity to deliver the promised services is ensuring the availability, distribution, and quality of human resources for health (HRH). [from abstract]

This paper focuses on the shortage in health workforce, its causes and its consequences.[from introduction]

This article analyzes community health workers’ (CHW) capacities for empathic service within an AIDS treatment program in Addis Ababa. I show how CHWs’ capacities to build relationships with stigmatized people, reconcile family disputes, and confront death draw on a constellation of values, desires, and emotions encouraged by CHWs’ families and religious teachings. I then examine the ways in which the capacities of CHWs were valued by the
institutions that deployed them.

In 2003, the Government of Ethiopia launched the Health Extension Programme and introduced a new cadre, health extension workers (HEWs), to improve access to care in rural communities. In 2013, to inform the government’s plans for HEWs to take on an enhanced role in community-based newborn care, a time and motion study was conducted to understand the range of HEW responsibilities and how they allocate their time across health and non-health activities. [from abstract]

This study aims to design three future scenarios for Portuguese community pharmacists, recognizing the changing environment as an opportunity to develop the role that community pharmacists may play in the Portuguese health system. [from abstract]

The purpose of the paper is provide a brief review of the evolution of nursing education in the United States and globally, describe the current and projected state of nursing education, and discuss some pressing challenges educators face as they strive to meet the charge to prepare nurses to care for more complex patients situated in ever-changing health-care systems. [from abstract]

This report brings together 10 in-depth studies on different aspects of Japan’s UHC [Universal Healthcare Coverage] experience, using a common framework for analysis focused on the political economy of UHC reform, and the policies and strategies for addressing challenges in health financing and human resources for health. Japan’s commitment to UHC played a key role in the country’s economic recovery after World War second, and helped ensure that the benefits of economic growth were shared equitably across the population. [from abstract]

There are various socio-cultural issues/obstacles in prevention of HIV-AIDS in high risk group for e.g., gender inequality, power inequalities and male dominance; condom use believed to be in conflict with the cultural importance for procreation; poverty, illiteracy, increase in migrant population and unemployment; poor knowledge and awareness of reproductive and sexual health and sexuality; emergence of new urban sub-culture and physical or mental abuse at a young age.

The world is witnessing the unprecedented unfolding of the West African Ebola epidemic. The epidemic could have major ramifications for global public health in ways that no other modern infectious disease has, perhaps including AIDS, and can be viewed as a “Black Swan” event. What we call here a Black Swan (and capitalize it) is an event with the following three attributes. First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expecta- tions, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility.

While the Millennium Development Goals focused on redressing extreme poverty and its antecedents for people living in developing countries, the post-2015 agenda seeks to redress inequity worldwide, regardless of a country’s development status. Furthermore, to rectify the UN’s top-down approach toward the Millennium Development Goals’ formulation, widespread negotiations are underway that seek to include the voices of people and communities from around the globe to ground each post-2015 development goal.

Achieving health goals in a context of deep-rooted inequality and marginalization requires going beyond the simple expansion of health services and working with developing trusting relationships between health service providers and community members. Involving community members in decision-making processes that shape policies will contribute to a
larger process of community empowerment and democratization. [from abstract]

The importance of health policy and systems research and analysis (HPSR?+?A) has been increasingly recognised, but it is still unclear how most effectively to strengthen the capacity of the different organisations involved in this field. Universities are particularly crucial but the expansive literature on capacity development has little to offer the unique needs of HPSR?+?A activity within universities, and often overlooks the pivotal contribution of capacity assessments to capacity strengthening. [from abstract]

The study observed the impact of an experimental supportive intervention to India’s malaria control program by location on the individual level. There are various possible reasons that account for the observed divergence across districts. [from abstract]

This is a review of the health financing situation in the Republic of Gabon. The book reviews the situation in the country under the lens of the principles of health financing: revenue mobilization for health, risk pooling, and purchasing services. [from abstract]

The goals of Universal Health Coverage (UHC) are to ensure that all people can access quality health services, to safeguard all people from public health risks, and to protect all people from impoverishment due to illness, whether from out-of-pocket payments for health care or loss of income when a household member falls sick. [from resource]

Taking a perspective of frontline health workers as internal clients within health systems, this study explored how perceived injustice in policy and organizational matters influence frontline health worker motivation and the consequent effect on workers’ attitudes and performance in delivering maternal and neonatal health care in public hospitals. [from abstract]

To improve monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of health programs in Botswana, 51 recent university graduates with no experience in M&E were recruited and provided with on-the-job training and mentoring to develop a new cadre of health worker: the district M&E officer. Three years after establishment of the cadre, an assessment was conducted to document achievements and lessons learnt. [from abstract]

We explore the current status of this area in the research community. E-health gives us an introduction to why we are trying to introduce information and communication technology’s (ICT’s) in order to improve health care. [adapted from abstract]

Given the global health worker crisis, now more than ever there is a critical need to improve the productivity of the existing health workforce and maximize service delivery efficiencies to ensure quality family planning/reproductive health (FP/RH), HIV and AIDS, maternal and child health, and other health services as well as further progress towards universal health coverage. This course explores some basic concepts of health workforce productivity. [from resource]

This article presents a South African case study of an intervention to address conflict in roles and responsibilities between multiple actors supporting service delivery at the local level, and explores the broader insights this experience generates about the nature of local health system governance. [from abstract]

Formalized task shifting structures have been used to rapidly scale up antiretroviral service delivery to underserved populations in several countries, and may be a promising mechanism for accomplishing universal health coverage. However, studies evaluating the quality of service delivery through task shifting have largely ignored the patient perspective, focusing on health outcomes and acceptability to health care providers and regulatory bodies, despite studies worldwide that have shown the significance of patient satisfaction as an indicator of quality.

Public health services in sub-Sahara Africa countries face severe health workforce shortages exacerbated by both outward migration and internal public-to-private sector migration—Tanzania is no exception. This review was conducted to characterize the extent of health workforce shortages in Tanzania, and the factors impacting on the shortage. [from abstract]

In post-conflict settings, severe disruption to health systems invariably leaves populations at high risk of disease and
in greater need of health provision than more stable resource-poor countries. The health workforce is often a direct
victim of conflict. Effective human resource management (HRM) strategies and policies are critical to addressing the
systemic effects of conflict on the health workforce such as flight of human capital, mismatches between skills and
service needs, breakdown of pre-service training, and lack of human resource data.

There has been a resurgence of interest in national Community Health Worker (CHW) programs in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). A lack of strong research evidence persists, however, about the most efficient and effective strategies to ensure optimal, sustained performance of CHWs at scale. To facilitate learning and research to address this knowledge gap, the authors developed a generic CHW logic model that proposes a theoretical causal pathway to improved performance. The logic model draws upon available research and expert knowledge on CHWs in LMICs.[from abstract]

Performance-Based Financing (PBF) has been advanced as a solution to contribute to improving the performance of health systems in developing countries. This is the case in Benin. This study aims to analyse how two PBF approaches, piloted in Benin, behave during implementation and what effects they produce, through investigating how local stakeholders perceive the introduction of PBF, how they adapt the different approaches during implementation, and the behavioural interactions induced by PBF. [from abstract]