Browse by Subject

Training and Retaining More Rural Doctors for South Africa

The so-called brain drain is a complex phenomenon with a web of push-pull factors determining final outcomes. There are no quick fixes. Yet, those on the front lines addressing the critical personnel shortages in South Africa’s public health system - especially in rural areas - have pointed to approaches that could slow the exodus and eventually turn the situation around. [from author]

Faith-Based Models for Improving Maternal and Newborn Health

This document explores some FBO health networks and facility-based services in Uganda and Tanzania. A pilot project in the Kasese District of Uganda illustrates how protestant, catholic and muslim health care providers and communities can work together from household-to-hospital levels to improve health outcomes. [from author]

Integrating HIV Prevention in the Care Setting: Health Manager's Guide

This guide outlines a step-by-step method for healthcare supervisors and managers who would like to put together a prevention team and program; gives healthcare workers the tools and knowledge to take advantage of HIV prevention oppotunities in healthcare settings; and provices sample training, communication materials, and strategies to support prevention plans. [from author]

Global Standards for the Initial Education of Professional Nurses and Midwives

Initial nursing or midwifery education prepares professionals for the workforce thus there is a need for programmes to be of a high quality. The development of global standards for initial nursing and midwifery education identifies the essential, critical components of education. [from author]

Replicating Success: Developing a Standard FETP Curriculum

Field epidemiology training programs have been successful models to address a country’s needs for a skilled public health workforce, partly due to their responsiveness to the countries’ unique needs. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has partnered with ministries of health to strengthen their workforce through customized competency-based training programs. The standard curriculum has supported the development and expansion of programs while still allowing for adaptation.

Scaling Up, Saving Lives

This report calls for a rapid and significant scaling up of the education and training of health workers as part of a broader effort to strengthen health systems. It highlights the importance of training to meet a country’s own health needs and the great opportunity represented by the increased use of community- and mid-level workers. [from foreword]

There are also case studies from Ghana, Malawi, Pakistan, Ethiopia and Bangladesh on strategic implementation of health worker training plans.

Guidelines: Incentives for Health Professionals

This paper was commissioned by the health professions with the support of the Global Health Workforce Alliance to provide an overview of the use of incentives for health care professionals. It describes some of the different approaches taken and presents characteristics shared by effective incentive schemes. The paper also suggests some approaches to their development and implementation. [from introduction]

I Can Make a Difference in One's Family Life: Preventing Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV in Ethiopia

This brief discusses the Capacity Project’s work to train health workers to help prevent mother to child transmission of HIV.

Working from the Inside: Mainstreaming HIV into Government Planning in Kenya

This brief describes the successful process of working within the government to achieve results in HIV planning. [adapted from author]

Role of Networking in Managing Migration of Human Resources for Health in the Philippines

This paper aims to present the existing HRH problems exemplified by migration in the light of other related issues such as the nurse medic phenomenon, foreign doctors taking up residency training, quality of nursing education, paradoxical enrollment trends in nursing and medicine and the effects of migration on health service delivery.

Environmental Scan of Pharmacy Technicians: Roles and Responsibilities, Education and Accreditation and Certification

This environmental scan of pharmacy technicians is intended to develop an accurate summary of knowledge, issues and activities relating to the roles and responsibilities, curriculum and accreditation, and certification of pharmacy technicians in Canada, from a national, provincial, territorial and international perspective. [from summary]

Comprehensive Review of the Pharmacy Workforce

This is a comprehensive review of the Pharmacy Workforce in Northern Ireland undertaken between February and April 2001. It outlines themethodology and discusses the results obtained with regard to the areas of recruitment and retention, demand and models of deployment. [adapted from author]

Study of Demand and Supply of Pharmacists, 2000-2010

This study aims to project the supply and demand for pharmacists between 2000 and 2010. On the supply side, these include the latest information on student intake and projected graduations. On the demand side, they include a consideration of the impact of the Third Community Pharmacy Agreement, the increasing focus on safety and quality of medicines use across the continuum of care and a host of clinical governance and Commonwealth and State/Territory government policies which impact on the demand for pharmacists. [from summary]

Career Intentions of Pharmacy Students

In light of pharmacy workforce shortages in Great Britain, the profession’s regulatory body commissioned a programme of longitudinal work to explore pharmacy career decision-making in relation to influences on career choice and intended career paths. Our objective was to gather data on career intentions that could be used to produce robust predictions about pharmacist supply. [from abstract]

Scaling Up Health Workforce Production: a Concept Paper Towards Implementation of World Health Assembly Resolution WHA59.23

This note discusses challenges and options in scaling up the production of skilled health workers and strengthening the health professions educational capacity of the countries in crisis, particularly in Africa. [from introduction]

Monitoring the Health Workforce: Measurement Issues and Selected Tools

Drawing upon a combination of complementary data sources, both new and existing, can result in useful and rich information for measuring and monitoring health workforce stock and flows, and the impact on health and health systems. [from author]

Gender and Health Workforce Statistics

Gender analysis of the health workforce may reveal that health systems themselves can reflect or even exacerbate many of the social inequalities they are meant to address and be immune from.

Monitoring Education and Training for Health Workers

Measuring and monitoring the whole education and training pipeline is essential to the planning, management and quality control of the health workforce in a country. This requires timely and reliable data on each of its phases. [from author]

Provision of Injectable Contraception Services through Community-Based Distribution: Implementation Handbook

Produced in collaboration with Save the Children USA, this step-by-step guide explains how to introduce injectable contraceptives

Republic of Trinidad and Tobago: Caribbean Region HIV and AIDS Service Provision Assessment Survey 2006

Focusing on the formal public health sector in Tobago, the HSPA findings provide information on both basic and advanced-level HIV and AIDS services and the availability of record-keeping systems for monitoring HIV and AIDS care and support. Within the Caribbean region, there is a concern for the recent training of health professionals who provide HIV and AIDS services, for health worker attitudes towards people living with HIV and AIDS (PLHIV) and for patient movement within the region.

Health Systems Database

This easy-to-use web-based tool compiles and analyzes country data from multiple sources, provides charting options, and generates automated country fact sheets, helping users to assess the performance of the country’s health systems.

Village-Based Midwife Programme in Indonesia

The government of Indonesia launched the village-based midwife program to place a skilled birth attendant in every village to provide antenatal and perinatal care, family planning, other reproductive health services, and nutrition counseling. The attendants were also to facilitate basic primary health-care services, including immunization and nutrition interventions.

Introducing Family Planning Services into Antiretroviral Program in Ghana: an Evaluation of a Pilot Intervention

This report documents the assessment of a family planning training program for providers to enable them to offer family planning counseling and methods, and make referrals where needed as part of antiretroviral therapy services in Ghana. [from summary]

Mapping of Community Based Distribution Programs in Uganda

The mapping exercise illustrated in this report was conducted to inform and support the efforts of the Ugandan Ministry of Health to increase the contraceptive prevalence through enhanced community-based distribution (CBD) of family planning. The specific objectives of the exercise were to determine the historical and current coverage of CBD of family planning services in Uganda, by both governmental and nongovernmental programs, and to identify potential districts for scaling up these services. [adapted from summary]

Community-Based HIV/AIDS Prevention Care and Support Project (COPHIA)

The emphasis of the COPHIA program is the provision of home-based care and support services by multi-purpose community-based health workers to vulnerable households in the geographic focus areas that are coping with the burden of caring for seriously ill family members or caring for orphans and vulnerable children. The COPHIA community-based health workers, with the support of clinical and non-clinical supervisors, provide the direct physical and emotional care and support services to PLWHA and orphans and vulnerable children in the project catchment area with the support of trained primary caregivers.

Knowledge of Iraqi Primary Health Care Physicians about Breastfeeding

A questionnaire survey was conducted on 50 primary health care physicians in Iraq to assess their knowledge and identify misperceptions about breastfeeding. Basic knowledge about the main processes of breastfeeding was good (when to start feeding, frequency of feeding, relactation, importance of psychological factors), but there were deficiencies in their ability to deal with some practical problems related to breastfeeding. Steps for improving the knowledge and training are addressed. [from abstract]

Barbados: Caribbean Region HIV and AIDS Service Provision Assessment Survey 2005

The 2005 Barbados HIV/AIDS Service Provision Assessment (Barbados HSPA) survey report provides baseline information on the capacity of the formal public health sector in Barbados to provide both basic and advanced level HIV and AIDS services and the availability of recordkeeping systems for monitoring HIV and AIDS care and support. Within the Caribbean region, there is a concern for the recent training of health professionals who provide HIV and AIDS services, for health worker attitudes towards people living with HIV (PLHIV) and for patient movement within the region. The Barbados HSPA captured information on these region-specific indicators in addition to the standard HSPA indicators.

Community Problem Solving and Immunization Strategy Development: Linking Health Workers with Communities Facilitator's Guide

An immunization consultation is useful when health workers are providing immunizations in their service area, but do not work in partnership with the community to attain full coverage. A consultation is not training but rather an opportunity to step back, look at problems that lead to low coverage and design strategies that involve the community in increasing that coverage. The consultation outlined in this Facilitator’s Guide is designed to help trainers enable health workers consider ways to increase and sustain a high immunization coverage in their respective service areas.

Dominica: Caribbean Region HIV and AIDS Service Provision Assessment Survey 2005

The HIV/AIDS Service Provision Assessment (HSPA) was developed to assess the
quality and capacity of HIV and AIDS-related services in high prevalent situations. information on both basic and advanced level HIV and AIDS services and the availability of recordkeeping systems for monitoring HIV and AIDS care and support. Within the Caribbean region, there is a concern for the recent training of health professionals who provide HIV and AIDS services, for health worker attitudes towards people living with HIV and AIDS and for patient movement within the region. The Dominica HSPA captured information on these region-specific indicators in addition to the standard HSPA indicators.

St. Vincent and the Grenadines: Caribbean Region HIV and AIDS Service Provision Assessment Survey 2005

The HIV/AIDS Service Provision Assessment (HSPA) was developed to assess the quality and capacity of HIV and AIDS-related services in high prevalent situations. Focusing on the formal public health sector in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, the HSPA findings provides information on both basic and advanced-level HIV and AIDS services and the availability of record-keeping systems for monitoring HIV and AIDS care and support. Within the Caribbean region, there is a concern for the recent training of health professionals who provide HIV and AIDS services, for health worker attitudes towards people living with HIV and AIDS and for patient movement within the region.