Browse by Geographic Focus

Sri Lankan Scheme to Help Fight Medical Brain Drain

This video tells the story of a Sri Lankan paediatric doctor who is participating in a government scheme that places doctors in oversees placements for training with a bond that requires the doctor to return home and work at least four years for every year spent abroad in the placement. [adapted from publisher]

Access to General Practitioner Services amongst Underserved Australians: A Microsimulation Study

This paper aims to examine equity of utilisation of general practitioner services in Australia, particularly those living in remote or rural areas. [from abstract]

Effectiveness of an Intervention in Increasing Community Health Clinician Provision of Preventive Care: A Study Protocol of a Non-Randomised, Multiple-Baseline Trial

This study aims to assess the effectiveness of a multi-strategic practice change intervention in increasing clinician’s routine provision of preventive care across a network of community health services. [from abstract]

Home Support Workers: Human Resource Strategies to Meet Chronic Care Needs of Canadians - Final Report

This paper is a synthesis of research on recruitment and retention challenges for home support workers in Canada. [from author]

Scale-Up of Community-Based Malaria Control Can be Achieved without Degrading Community Health Workers' Service Quality: The Village Malaria Worker Project in Cambodia

Cambodia recently scaled up their Village Malaria Worker (VMW) project by substantially increasing the number of VMWs and expanding the project’s health services to include treatment of fever, diarrhoea, and acute respiratory infections in children under five. This study examined if the scale-up interfered with VMWs’ service quality, actions, and knowledge of malaria control, and analysed VMWs’ overall achievements and perceptions of the newly added health services. [from abstract]

Listening to Health Workers: Lessons from Eastern Uganda for Strengthening the Programme for the Prevention of Monther-to-Child Transmission of HIV

This article explored the lessons learned by health workers involved in the provision of prevention of mother-to-child transmission services in eastern Uganda to better understand what more needs to be done to strengthen the program. [adapted from abstract]

Eliciting Policymakers' and Stakeholders' Opinions to Help Shape Health System Research Priorities in the Middle East and North Africa Region

This paper presents the results of a recent research priority-setting exercise that identified regional policy concerns and research priorities related to health financing, human resources and the non-state sector, based on stakeholders in nine low and middle income countries in the region. The countries included were Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen. [adapated from abstract]

Midwifery in Bangladesh: In-Depth Country Analysis

This background paper for “The State of the World’s Midwifery 2011” provides detailed information on the midwife cadre in Bangladesh, its role in the health system, training and the state of the field.

Positive Spill-Over Effects of ART Scale Up on Wider Health Systems Development: Evidence from Ethiopia and Malawi

The impact of HIV-specific funds and programmes on non-HIV-related health services and health systems in genera has been debated extensively. Drawing on evidence from Malawi and Ethiopia, this article analyses the effects of ART scale-up interventions on human resources policies, service delivery and general health outcomes, and explores how synergies can be maximized. [from abstract]

WHO Global Code of Practice: Implementation in the U.S.

This presentation discusses the United States’ implementation of the WHO Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel, the challenges and next steps. [adapted from author]

Toward Development of a Rural Retention Strategy in Lao People’s Democratic Republic: Understanding Health Worker Preferences

This technical report presents the results of a discrete choice experiment (DCE) conducted by the Lao People’s Democratic Republic Ministry of Health, in partnership with the World Health Organization and CapacityPlus, using CapacityPlus’s rural retention survey toolkit. The DCE surveyed health professional students and health workers practicing in rural provinces to investigate their motivational preferences for potential strategies to increase attraction and retention in the country’s rural and remote settings. [from publisher]

Exploring the Human Resources for Health Landscape for Adult Male Circumcision Rollout in Four Districts in Nyanza Province, Kenya

To help support the introduction of adult maled circumcision (MC) for HIV prevention in Kenya, this study was conducted to gather information about the current MC policy and program environment regarding HRH planning to support adult MC scale-up in four districts in Kenya. [from author]

Quality Healthcare and Workers on the Move

This report on South Africa is part of a global research project on the origin and destination countries for migration of health workers around the world. It contends that the health and social worker migration must be considered in the broader context of the human right to health and decent work, ethical migration and recruitment processes, global human resources for health and the health related Millennium Development Goals.

Addressing Educational Needs of Health Workers in Ghana Using Distance Education

This paper seeks to analyze the import of distance education for promotion of proficiency skills in the health sector and review ongoing professional development programmes for health workers in Ghana, and come out with strategies to offer training avenues leading to the professional growth of the individuals and economic growth of the country. [from abstract]

Human Resources for Health in Maternal, Neonatal and Reproductive Health at Community Level: A Profile of Timor-Leste

This profile summarises the available information on the cadres working at community level in Timor-Leste: their diversity, distribution, supervisory structures, education and training, as well as the policy and regulations that govern their practice. [from summary]

Comprehensive Framework for Human Resources for Health System Development in Fragile and Post-Conflict States

The purpose of this paper is to present a comprehensive, engaging, and visible framework of HRH system development. This has been further developed from the lessons distilled from Japanese experiences of supporting HRH system development in three fragile and post-conflict health systems: Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Cambodia. [from author]

Hotline HRH December 2011

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.

Evaluation of Knowledge Levels Amongst Village AIDS Committees After Undergoing HIV Educational Sessions: Results from a Pilot Study in Rural Tanzania

This paper describes the evaluation of a tailored HIV curriculum for village AIDS committees (VACs) within a rural area to determine if the curriculum increased levels of HIV knowledge among the VAC members through conducting baseline and post-training surveys. [adapted from author]

Antenatal Care in Practice: An Exploratory Study in Antenatal Care Clinics in the Kilombero Valley, South-Eastern Tanzania

This paper uses ethnographic methods to document health workers’ antenatal care practices with reference to the national Focused Antenatal Care guidelines and identifies factors influencing health workers’ performance. Potential implications for improving antenatal care provision in Tanzania are discussed. [from abstract]

Gaps in the Supply of Physicians, Advance Practice Nurses, and Physician Assistants

Based on the goals of health care reform, growth in the demand for health care will continue to increase the demand for physicians and, as physician shortages widen, advanced practice nurses and physician assistants will play larger roles. The objective of this study was to assess the capacity of this combined workforce to meet the future demand for clinical services. [from author]

Human Resources for Health in Maternal, Neonatal and Reproductive Health at a Community Level: A Profile of Cambodia

This profile summarises the available information on the cadres working at community level in Cambodia; their diversity, distribution, supervisory structures, education and training, as well as the policy and regulations that govern their practice. [from summary]

Missing the Essentials? Children Can Be Saved if They Are More Carefully Examined

A study from rural Tanzania shows that health workers usually don’t do the investigations that are required to identify some of the deadly illnesses that could be diagnosed and treat. [adapted from author]

Huge Potential for Improved Health Service Quality

This brief outlines a study from rural Tanzania that shows that there is a huge potential for improving service quality with the existing workforce, by reducing the large gap between knowledge and practice. [adapted from author]

Is Worker Effort Higher in Church-Based than in Government Health Facilities?

This brief reports the main results from a study aiming to compare worker effort levels in church-based and government health clinics in Tanzania. [from author]

Using Entrustable Professional Activities to Guide Curriculum Development in Psychiatry Training

Clinical activities that trainees can be trusted to perform with minimal or no supervision have been labelled as Entrustable Professional Activities. The authors sought to examine what activities could be entrusted to psychiatry trainees in their first year of specialist training. [from abstract]

How Much Time Do Nurses Have for Patients? A Longitudinal Study Quantifying Hospital Nurses' Patterns of Task Time Distribution and Interactions with Health Professionals

This article aimed to quantify how nurses distribute their time across tasks, with patients, in individual tasks, and engagement with other health care providers; and how work patterns changed over a two year period.

Factors Associated with Job Satisfaction among Chinese Community Health Workers: A Cross-Sectional Study

This study aims to clarify the level of job satisfaction of Chinese community health workers between a metropolitan and a small city in Liaoning province and explore its associated factors. [from abstract]

Convincing Health Workers to Work in Rural Areas

The focus of this brief is on nurses’, clinical officers’ and assistant medical officers’ job preferences and their willingness to work in rural and remote areas in Tanzania. [from author]

National Mental Health Programme: Manpower Development Scheme of Eleventh Five-Year Plan

India is facing shortage of qualified mental health manpower. Recognizing this key constraint, the government of India has formulated a manpower development scheme to address the issue. This article outlines the scheme’s primary initatives: centers of excellence in mental health, departments in mental health specialties, upgrading of psychiatric wings of medical colleges, and modernization of state-run mental hospitals. [adapted from abstract]

Pacific Regional Human Resource for Health: Policy Discussion Paper

This presentation was part of the University of New South Wales’ short course on managing human resources for health. It introduces the issues and challenges in HRH in 13 Pacific Island Nations leading to a proposed scheme to manage HRH migration and mobility. [adapted from author]