Latest Resources

Model for Community Health Service Development in Depressed Rural Areas in China

This article describes and intervention to introduce a model of community health service organization, as implemented in urban areas, to less developed rural areas in China and evaluate the impact of this model on health care utilization. [adapted from abstract]

Transforming the Health Worker Pipeline: Interventions to Eliminate Gender Discrimination in Preservice Education

This report describes the results of a systematic and expert review undertaken to identify practices that have the potential to counter forms of gender discrimination against students and faculty in preservice education institutions. [from publisher]

Strengthening the Health Worker Pipeline through Gender-Transformative Strategies

This technical brief provides an overview of how gender discrimination affects health professional students and faculty as well as intervention options that the expert panel identified as having potential to counter gender discrimination. In addition, it offers recommendations for preservice education institutions and other stakeholders to address these challenges. [from publisher]

Making Good Use of HMIS Information in Ethiopia

This brief describes the impact of using health management information system (HMIS) data, including an example of how this data improved the vaccination rates for newborns in Ethiopia.

Seven Years of the Field Epidemiology Training Programme (FETP) at Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India: An Internal Evaluation

Beginning in 2001, the National Institute of Epidemiology admitted 80 trainees in its two-year field epidemiology training programme. This article evaluated the first seven years of the programme to identify strengths and weaknesses. [adapted from author]

Occupational Health Risks of Pathologists: Results from a Nationwide Online Questionnaire in Switzerland

The work of pathologists is associated with potential health hazards including injuries involving infectious human tissue, chemicals which are assumed to be carcinogenic or long periods of microscope and computer work. This study aimed to provide a comprehensive assessment of the health situation of pathologists in Switzerland. [adapted from abstract]

Scaling-Up Malaria Treatment: A Review of the Performance of Different Providers

This review looked for evidence for the most effective approach to deliver malaria treatment in developing countries, by public sector, formal and informal private sector, and community health workers. The authors analysed 31 studies to assess providers based on six criteria: knowledge and practice of provider, diagnosis, referral practices, price of medicine, availability of ACT, and treatment coverage and impact on morbidity and mortality. [from abstract]

Barriers and Facilitators to the Implementation of Clinical Practice Guidelines: A Cross-Sectional Survey among Physicians in Estonia

The objective of this study was to assess attitudes towards clinical practice guidelines, as well as the barriers and facilitators to their use, among Estonian physicians. The study was conducted to inform the revision of the clinical practice guideline development process and can provide inspiration to other countries considering the increasing use of evidence-based medicine. [from abstract]

Physician Migration at Its Roots: A Study on the Factors Contributing Towards a Career Choice Abroad Among Students at a Medical School in Pakistan

The main objectives of this study were to determine the prevalence of migration intentions in medical undergraduates, to elucidate the factors responsible and to analyze the attitudes and practices related to these intentions. [from abstract]

Emotional Intelligence, Emotional Labor, and Job Satisfaction among Physicians in Greece

This study aimed at investigating the relationships, direct and/or indirect, between emotional intelligence, the surface acting component of emotional labor, and job satisfaction in medical staff working in tertiary healthcare. [from abstract]

Protocol for the Effective Feedback to Improve Primary Care Prescribing Safety (EFIPPS) Study: A Cluster Randomised Controlled Trial Using ePrescribing Data

High-risk prescribing in primary care is common and causes considerable harm. Feedback interventions to improve care are attractive because they are relatively cheap to widely implement. There is good evidence that feedback has small to moderate effects, but the most recent Cochrane review called for more high-quality, large trials that explicitly test different forms of feedback. This paper describes a protocol for a cluster-randomised trial evaluating the impact on high-risk prescribing of two different designs of feedback compared to a simple educational message. [from author]

Health and Education Sector Collaboration in Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health in Sri Lanka: A Situational Analysis and Case Study of the Kalutara District

There is a paucity of knowledge concerning the roles of those who provide adolescent health services, care and information across the health and education sectors, how they are managed and educated, and the policies that guide their practice.

Rapid Retention Survey Toolkit: Designing Evidence-Based Incentives for Health Workers

This toolkit is intended to allow human resources managers to determine health professionals’ motivational preferences for accepting and remaining in posts. The toolkit builds on the WHO global policy recommendations for rural retention and is based on the discrete choice experiment, a powerful research method that identifies the trade-offs health professionals (or other types of workers) are willing to make between specific job characteristics and determines their preferences for various incentive packages, including the probability of accepting a post in a rural health facility.

Designing Evidence-Based Incentives to Attract and Retain Health Workers Using the Rapid Retention Survey Toolkit

This free online course, developed by the HRH Global Resource Center and CapacityPlus, is based on the Rapid Retention Survey Toolkit. This course will orient participants on how to use a rapid discrete choice experiment methodology to design evidence-based incentives to attract and retain health workers in rural and remote areas. [from publisher]

Strengthening Human Resources for Health in Cote d'Ivoire

This short (4:38 minutes) video shares information about the Health Systems 20/20 assessment of the health system in Cote d’Ivoire. Based on the findings, the project worked with in-country partners to improve production of health workers, create incentives to motivate health workers to move to the underserved north, and build health management capacity. [from publisher]

Optimizing Health Worker Roles to Improve Access to Key Maternal and Newborn Health Interventions through Task Shifting

The objective of this guidance is to issue evidence-based recommendations to facilitate universal access to key, effective maternal and newborn interventions through the optimization of health worker roles. [from summary]

Community Discussion Guide for Maternal and Newborn Health Care: A Training Manual for Safe Motherhood Action Groups

This guide contains detailed guidance on how to train safe motherhood action group volunteers in two key areas of their portfolio – maternal and newborn health care.

Knowledge Translation in Uganda: A Qualitative Study of Ugandan Midwives' and Mangers' Perceived Relevance of the Sub-Elements of the Context Cornerstone in the PARIHS Framework

A major factor to consider in the successful translation of knowledge into practice for preventing neonatal deaths is the influence of organizational context. A theoretical framework highlighting this process is Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services (PARIHS). The objective of this study was to examine the perceived relevance of the subelements of the organizational context cornerstone of the PARIHS framework, and also whether other factors in the organizational context were perceived to influence knowledge translation in a specific low-income setting.

Developing Competencies and Professional Standards for Health Promotion Capacity Building in Europe: The CompHP Project Handbooks

Within this document is a set of competencies for Europe, a set of professional standards and a proposal for an accreditation system that will work to ensure greater quality, consistency and effectiveness of the health promotion workforce on this continent. The document contains three handbooks: core competencies framework, professional standards and accreditation framework. [adapted from author]

Hotline HRH November 2012

This edition of Hotline, an HRH newletter focused on the needs of faith-based organizations (FBOs) in Africa, highlights resources, trainings and workshops, articles of interest and other information for FBO HRH pracitioners.

Interprofessional Communication with Hospitalist and Consultant Physicians in General Internal Medicine: A Qualitative Study

This study aims to understand how team members’ perceptions and experiences with the communication styles and strategies of either hospitalist or consultant physicians in their units influence the quality and effectiveness of interprofessional relations and work. [from abstract]

How to Keep ART Patients in Long-Term Care: ART Adherence Club Report and Toolkit

This toolkit is simple model that allows patient groups to collect pre-packed, two-month supplies of treatment from lay health workers either at the clinic or outside of the clinic - whether at a local library or at a fellow patients home. Antiretroviral treatment (ART) adherence clubs give stable adherent HIV patients easier access to their treatment, while unclogging clinics and freeing up scarce nurses and doctors to manage new or at-risk HIV patients. [from publisher]

Exit Interviews: Determining Why Health Staff Leave

This study found that limited data collection systems and lack of exit interviews has meant that up-to-date, reliable and accurate data regarding all exiting health workers (HW) (not only those who intend to emigrate) are not readily available. Without such datasets, the dynamics of mobility and migration within the Pacific health workforce remain poorly understood and the development of strategies to retain HW severely hampered. [from author]

Why Do Clinicians Not Refer Patients to Online Decision Support Tools? Interviews with Front Line Clinics in the NHS

This study assessed whether clinical teams would direct patients to use web-based patient decision support interventions and whether patients would use them. The authors found that existing evidence of patient benefit and the free availability of patient decision support tools via the web are not sufficient drivers to achieve routine use, and the most significant obstacles to referral to the tools were the attitudes of clinicians and clinical teams. [adapted from abstract]

Patient's Silence towards the Healthcare System after Ethical Transgressions by Staff: Associations with Patient Characteristics in a Cross-Sectional Study among Swedish Female Patients

The objective of this study was to identify which patient characteristics are associated with silence towards the healthcare system after experiences of abusive or ethically wrongful transgressive behaviour by healthcare staff. [from abstract]