Documents & Reports

Tajikistan Country Assessment: Focus on Cardiovascular Disease

Cardiovascular diseases are the predominant cause of death in Tajikistan, with a growing burden of ischemic heart disease, strokes and cirrhosis between 1990 and 2010. Considering this, this report focuses on cardiovascular diseases and their risk factors, such as hypertension and poor nutrition; it is estimated that 40% of the Tajik population is overweight and 9% is obese. [from abstract]

Community Based Skilled Birth Attendants Programme in Bangladesh; Intervention towards Improving Maternal Health

To review the strength and weakness of a community based skilled birth attendant (CSBA) program in Bangladesh. [from abstract]

ASHP Guidelines on the Recruitment, Selection, and Retention of Pharmacy Personnel

These guidelines are intended to assist pharmacy managers in the recruitment, selection, and retention of qualified employees. The pharmacy manager working in an organized health care system will usually have to work with the system’s human resources department and within the framework of the specific recruitment, selection, and hiring policies of the organization. [from introduction]

Using Evidence for Human Resources for Health Decision-Making: An Example from Uganda on Health Workforce Recruitment and Retention

This technical brief offers six recommendations to help national stakeholders transform evidence into policy decisions and subsequent action. Using an example from Uganda, the authors illustrate how the development and sharing of evidence can support decision-making for change in health workforce recruitment and retention policies, toward the aim of improving access to high-quality health care for the population. [from introduction]

Universal Health Coverage for Inclusive and Sustainable Development: Country Summary Report for Indonesia

Indonesia, a low-middle income country of around 242 million people, has made impressive gains in health over the past few decades, notably in increased life expectancy and reduced infant and child mortality rates. There has been less progress in improving maternal mortality and malnutrition. [from abstract]

Universal Health Coverage Assessment: People’s Republic of Bangladesh

This document provides a preliminary assessment of the Bangladeshi health system relative to the goal of universal
health coverage, with a particular focus on the financing system and related aspects of provision. [from introduction]

Violence Against Health Care Part I : The Problem and the Law

In 2013, new data collected by the ICRC7 showed that the vast majority of violent incidents against health services that took place during 2012 – more than 80 per cent of the 900 or so incidents recorded in twenty-two countries – affected local health-care professionals. A quarter of the people affected by these incidents were killed or wounded, while the remainder of the incidents consisted of beatings, threats, arrests, kidnapping, and other violent occurrences. [from introduction]

Global Mental Health From A Policy Perspective

This report characterises mental health as a policy issue and outlines why it is frequently overlooked by policy-makers and donors. It draws upon the experience of different social movements across global health to provide lessons for the mental health field. [from introduction]

Against the Odds: Mozambique's Gains in Primary Health Care

Despite numerous persistent challenges – including low quality of care, continuing inequalities and the substantial impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic – Mozambique provides important lessons to other countries aiming to scale up health provision rapidly in a post-conflict setting. These particularly include the importance of focusing on distance and education as barriers to access, using innovative and low-cost human-resource policies to scale up health personnel quickly, and of moving towards more coordinated systems of aid disbursement. [from abstract]

Pathways to Progress: A Multi-Level Approach to Strengthening Health Systems

This report synthesises findings from five country case studies from the health dimension of this project, which focus
on maternal and child health (MCH) (Mozambique,Nepal, Rwanda) and neglected tropical diseases (NTDs)(Cambodia, Sierra Leone). MCH was selected given its centrality in two of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and its ability to act as a proxy for strengthened health systems.

Getting Healthier Around the World: Information and Communication Technologies for Child Health and Development

To celebrate Universal Children’s Day 2013, this report was commissioned by Sesame Workshop to achieve two objectives: (1) to explore current and future opportunities in the use of mobile phones and other relevant information and communications technologies (ICTs) for improving the health and development of young children as investments for a better future, and (2) to provide guidance and recommendations for partnerships, institutions or organizations interested in contributing to this field. [from executive summary]

Financing Medical Education through the Private Sector

From 2010 through 2013, the SHOPS project implemented a series of pilot activities to explore the feasibility of introducing private sector health education financing mechanisms. SHOPS explored private sector solutions to help meet ambitious targets from the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief for training new health care workers. This report shares the project’s work with private pre-service education financing in Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Zambia.

The Composition of the Social Service Workforce in HIV/AIDS-Affected Contexts

This technical report is intended to help the field move toward a common understanding of functions associated with different cadres within the social service workforce, titles associated with workers who perform these functions, and education or training that is typically associated with these cadres. [from resource]

The Drivers of Universal Health Care in South Africa: The Role of Ideas, Institutions and Actors

This paper outlines the opportunities and challenges posed by the proposed NHI [National Health Insurance] reforms in South Africa. It begins by explaining the country’s current system of health care provision including its human resource structure, functions and cost implications. It then summarizes the deficits and limitations of the current two-tiered health system and discusses what NHI is trying to achieve within this context and how it hopes to address the problems. [from summary]

Policy Brief: Strengthening Vital Statistics Systems

The Policy Brief has looked into different systems that produce data on causes of death and laid out some options and potential strategies that countries might follow to rapidly and cost-effectively improve the cause of death information that these systems produce. This in turn would greatly benefit national health planning and increase critical knowledge about disease burden in the region as well as provide accurate information about how it is changing. [from introduction]

Managing Quality in Community Health Care Services

Community health care services provide vital care out of hospital for millions of people. From children’s services to care for older people and end-of-life support, the community sector plays a key part in meeting the challenges facing our health and care system. This report presents findings from a small-scale study into how quality is managed in community services. It explores how community care providers define and measure quality and recommends important next steps to support better measurement and management of quality. [from introduction]

Rewarding Safer Sex: Conditional Cash Transfers for HIV/STI Prevention

At the end of the one year of intervention, the results showed a significant reduction in sexually transmitted infections in the group that was eligible for the $20 payments every four months,but no such reduction was found for the group receiving the $10 payments. The effects were stronger among the lower socioeconomic and higher risks groups. The results of a post-intervention follow-up survey conducted one year after discontinuing the intervention indicate a sustained effect among males, but not among females. [from abstract]

Interprofessional Collaborative Practice in Primary Health Care: Nursing and Midwifery Perspectives

This publication presents 6 case studies on interprofessional education and collaborative practice from Brazil, Canada, India, South Africa and the USA. The document also highlights some barriers and enablers to take into account for implementation. [from introduction]

Medical Teamwork and Patient Safety: The Evidence-Based Relation

The science of team performance and training can help the medical community improve patient safety. This report, commissioned by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), assesses the status of relevant team training research from aviation and other domains and applies this research to the field of medicine. It additionally provides a comprehensive review and evaluation of current medical team training initiatives and their effectiveness. [from resource]

Interprofessional Collaborative Teams

This paper aims to explore and explain the use of models of care delivery that optimally utilize the role of nurses in primary healthcare, community-based care and other non-acute care contexts such as chronic disease management, long-term care, continuing care, health promotion and disease prevention. Additionally, exemplar models of care, as case studies, are identified to highlight essential elements of effective service delivery models and strategies for successful application. [from introduction]

Teamwork in Healthcare: Promoting Effective Teamwork in Healthcare in Canada. Policy Synthesis and Recommendations

To prepare this report, an interprofessional research team conducted in-depth interviews with key informants and
undertook a wide-ranging survey of peer-reviewed and grey literature on the components of teamwork; effectiveness of teams; types of interventions; healthcare team dynamics; and the impact of government infrastructure, legislation,
and policy on teamwork in the Canadian healthcare system. [from summary]

Population, Family Planning and Reproductive Health Policy Harmonization in Bangladesh

Over the past 30 years, Bangladesh has achieved significant economic and human development progress, and demonstrated impressive policy as well as programmatic commitment to lowering the fertility level. However, its future socioeconomic prospects may be hampered by its population growth rate, depending on how quickly the fertility rates decline and at which point they stabilize. [from abstract]

Training for PEPFAR OVC Survey Data Collectors

Data collectors implementing the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) survey tools must be trained to a high standard. To enable this, MEASURE Evaluation has developed a training manual and materials for data collectors. Groups wanting to implement the OVC survey tools will need to adapt this training manual and materials to reflect the aims and design of the specific study. [from introduction]

Hidden in Plain Sight: A Statistical Analysis of Violence Against Children

While acknowledging these limitations, this report makes use of available evidence to describe what is currently known about global patterns of violence against children, using data compiled from a selection of sources . The analyses focus primarily on forms of interpersonal violence, defined as violent acts inflicted on children by another individual or a small group. [from introduction]

Note: Users will be asked to provide email, name an organization name to receive this publication.

Social Service Workforce Training in the West and Central Africa Region

The focus of this study is to better understand how social workers and related professionals are
trained and educated—both formally and informally—to engage in social work practice, especially as it is related to child protection, in the West and Central Africa region. [from executive summary]

A Framework To Design, Test, Spread, and Sustain Effective Practice in Child Welfare

A Framework To Design, Test, Spread, and Sustain Effective Practice in Child Welfare is a practical guide for strengthening child welfare systems. It describes a process for exploring problems in child welfare, developing interventions, building evidence about their effectiveness, integrating effective interventions into routine child welfare practice, and continually improving on their delivery. The framework is designed to promote better integration of evaluation with program and policy decision-making and to encourage stronger partnerships between child welfare stakeholders.

Developing Social Care and Support Services in Uganda

Social care and support services include such areas as the protection of children from violence and exploitation, care for chronically sick or disabled children and adults, support in dealing with the social difficulties of those affected by conflicts and disasters and responses to gender based violence. The aim of this paper is to make proposals for a unified coherent strategic framework which clarifies the vision, nature, scope and rationale for social care and support services. [from introduction]

Rethinking Resistance to ‘Big IT’: A Sociological Study of Why and When Healthcare Staff Do Not See Nationally Mandated Information and Communication Technologies

Our analysis focused mainly on the Choose and Book system for outpatient referrals, introduced in 2004, which remained unpopular and little used throughout the period of our research (i.e. 2007–13). We identified four foci of resistance: to the policy of choice that Choose and Book symbolised and purported to deliver; to accommodating the technology’s sociomaterial constraints; to interference with doctors’ contextual judgements; and to adjusting to the altered social relations consequent on its use.

Health Workforce 2030: A Global Strategy on Human Resources for Health

A global strategy on human resources for health that addresses, in an integrated way, all aspects ranging from planning, education, management, retention, incentives, linkages with the social service workforce, can inform more incisive, multi-sectoral action, based on new evidence and best practices. This brochure sheds light on why a global strategy on HRH is necessary and outlines the process of developing WHOs strategy. [from abstract]

Road Map for Scaling Up the Human Resources for Health in the African Region 2012–2025

The Road map, which was developed with the appreciable contribution of critical stakeholders such as ministries of health, education, public services and finance as well as universities and training institutions regulators, professional bodies, civil society and nongovernmental organizations, defines strategic directions and priority interventions to be implemented in the period 2012–2025. [from introduction]