Tools & Guides

This guide provides information for health sector workers and trade unionists interested in finding ways to ensure that international migration has positive, rather than negative outcomes for workers and health care systems. Information about the recruitment and migration process is designed to assist health workers who are considering migrating.

The Mental Health Gap Action Program (mhGAP) aims at scaling up services for mental, neurological and substance use disorders for countries especially with low- and middle-income. This guide for mental, neurological and substance use disorders for non-specialist health settings, is a technical tool developed to assist in implementation of mhGAP. [from publisher]

The Service Target Staffing Projection Tool is designed to estimate the workforce required to deliver an agreed package of health services. The tool helps to set targets for production and recruitment of staff based on assumptions concerning the staff required at each level of the health system. [from author]

This guide is intended for health-care workers, program managers and policy-makers who are responsible for the quality of maternal health care within a health-care facility or of the entire health system. It presents a standard approach for monitoring the implementation of critical interventions in maternal health care and proposes a systematic process for assessing the quality of care. In its entirety, the included methods and related processes constitute the WHO maternal near-miss approach. [from introduction]

These standards were created to guide those who are responsible for planning, developing, implementing, and evaluating training programs of many types. The standards outline the elements that effective training and learning programs should include and serve as a foundation upon which curricula and programs should be developed, supported, and evaluated. [adapted from author]

The Twubakane Gender-Based Violence/Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV Readiness Assessment is a toolkit to assess the readiness of service providers, service facilities, the community and the policy environment to respond to gender-based violence at antenatal care/prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV service sites and in the community. Each file is a downloadable MS Word document, in English or French, that can be customized for the user’s location. [from publisher]

This pocket manual serves as a cursory reference to the tools used to improve the demand for and use of information in health decision making. [from author]

These guidelines provide a practical, clear, and user-friendly set of actions that human resources for health leaders at the country level can take to successfully launch and sustain stakeholder leadership groups. [from publisher]

This compendium provides a list of published indicators on human resources for health (HRH) organized according to the results framework of the CapacityPlus project. The objective of this compendium is to provide a tool for HRH systems strengthening practitioners interested in monitoring HRH projects and programs.

This guide aims to assist policymakers, health workers, and civil society organizations understand health stigma and discrimination and identify the ways in which each can work to combat their expression. [from introduction]

This toolkit was designed to help organizations assess community health worker (CHW) program functionality and improve program performance. Built around a core of 15 components deemed essential for effective programs, CHW the toolkit includes a guided self-assessment and performance improvement process to help organizations identify program strengths and address gaps. [adapted from introduction]

A project supported the creation of a network of teaching and community hospitals to develop a . This paper provides an overview of the process used to develop a best practice toolkit in nursing human resource planning targeted at first line nursing managers, a description of the toolkit contents and a reflection on the outcomes of the project. [adapted from abstract]

The purpose of this guide is to support the strengthening of existing, or establishing new, human resources for health development departments at the central and subnational levels.

The International Pharmaceutical Federation’s World List of Pharmacy Schools is an extensive and up-to-date list of institutions of pharmacy and pharmaceutical sciences education and is continually updated and reviewed by those listed, providing the latest contact information to the outside world. [adapted from publisher]

The Workload Indicators of Staffing Need (WISN) method is a human resource management tool. It provides health managers a systematic way to make staffing decisions in order to manage their valuable human resources.

Studies and field observations have found that community health workers (CHWs) can provide injectables safely and that community access to injectables attracts new contraceptive users. This guide is designed to assist the many health professionals and advocates who are interested in making injectable contraceptives more widely available, especially for women with little or no access to health facilities. The guide describes six steps that advocates can take to support policy change to permit CHWs to provide injectables. [from summary]

As a self-contained technical instruction manual, this handbook is intended to provide a practical tool to guide the identification and definition of initial baseline data to be collected in order to provide a descriptive profile of countries’ human resources for health to facilitate monitoring their progress towards achieving their HRH goals over time. [from author]

This is a digital collection of health competency tools. The Competence Search tool enables you to search the database for specific health worker competencies. The Health Functional Map is another tool to help you find relevant competences based upon the Skills for Health, Health Functional Map, and covers all of the functions that are needed to deliver effective health care services. The Self Assessment tool enables assessment of your own abilities against competences in lists/profiles. The Team Assessment tool enables a skills mix analysis of your team.

Despite being workers on the front line responding to the public’s HIV and TB care needs, health workers themselves often do not have access to HIV and TB services. These guidelines aim to protect, retain and empower health workers in dealing with the dual threat of HIV and TB and reinforce good practicies for health workers who are living with HIV and/or TB. [adapted from introduction]

The manual orientes program managers and technical staff on how to integrate gender concerns into program design, implementation, and evaluation. The manual promotes greater understanding of how gender relations and identities affect individuals’ and groups’ capacity to negotiate and obtain better RH/HIV/AIDS decisions and outcomes. [from preface]

The purpose of this guide is to increase awareness of the HRH Action Framework (HAF), which is designed to assist governments and health managers to develop and implement a comprehensive HRH strategy that will result in an effective and sustainable health workforce. [adapted from author]

The The Interagency Gender Working Group (IGWG) toolkit is a resource on gender and health that brings together a wealth of practical and hands-on how-to resources for gender integration and mainstreaming in health policies, programs, and institutions. [adapted from author]

The goal of this document is to provide a quick reference of suggested communication approaches for health researchers and M&E professionals in order to facilitate stakeholders’ use of health information for decision-making. [from author]

This toolkit is your one-stop source for evidence-based knowledge and promising practices to support the successful integration of family planning (FP) and HIV services. It summarizes the latest evidence and provides links to guidelines and tools to help you plan, manage, deliver, evaluate, and support integrated services. [adapted from publisher]

This document describes the key effective interventions organized in packages across the continuum of care through pre-pregnancy, pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum, newborn care and care of the child. The packages are defined for community and/or facility levels in developing countries and provide guidance on the essential components needed to assure adequacy and quality of care. [from publisher]

The objective of this paper is to take stock of the available methods and tools for health workforce planning and projections, and to describe the processes and resources needed to undertake such an exercise. [from introduction]

After a year-long consultative effort, this document proposes sixteen evidence-based recommendations on how to improve the recruitment and retention of health workers in underserved areas. It also offers a guide for policy makers to choose the most appropriate interventions, and to implement, monitor and evaluate their impact over time. [from publisher]

This tool is to be used as a starting point for the collation, analysis and synthesis of data and evidence on human resources for health (HRH), as well as for monitoring the strengths and limitations of the underlying information systems. It has been developed as part of a series of efforts to enhance country capacities to generate, analyse and use data to assess health workforce performance and track progress towards their HRH-related goals. [from publisher]

This document contains a method for assessing the financial, educational and management systems and policy context, essential for strategic planning and policy development for human resources for health. This tool has been developed as an evidence-based comprehensive diagnostic aid to inform policy-making in low and middle income countries in regard to human resources for health. [from introduction]

This document is intended to help countries to identify appropriate human resource interventions, by making it possible to see how the current health workforce is distributed within and between public and private sectors, areas of specialization and level of care. It is proposed that a common approach be used to collect data in a number of areas, including workforce demographics and planning, staffing distribution, remuneration of health workers and skill mix. [from author]