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Challenge and Change: Integrating the Challenge of Gender Norms and Sexuality in a Maternal Health Program

This report documents some of the processes undertaken to integrate gender and sexuality factors into a maternal health project in Uttar Pradesh, India from 2007-2009. [from foreword]

Meeting Challenges, Seeding Change: Integrating Gender and Sexuality into Maternal and Newborn Health Programming through the Inner Spaces, Outer Faces Initiative (ISOFI)

This document reviews the ISOFI program. The iterative steps of this system focus on building staff and organisational capacity to critically analyse the social construction of gender and explore how gender influences personal values and beliefs and programmatic designs and choices. In turn, through the analysis-reflection-action cycle of the ISOFI Innovation System, staff can help community health providers and other stakeholders to analyse gender issues, reflect on local barriers and opportunities, and make implementation plans to catalyze change. [from author]

Assessment of the Health Management Information Systems in Select Areas of Aceh Province

This assessment evaluates a health service mangement systems project undertaken in the Aceh province after the 2004 earthquakea and tsunami. The project implemented information systems for hospitals and primary care, and this evaluation details the lessons learned and challenges from health workers as well as the short term impact the systems have had on health service delivery processes.

Nurse Led, Primary Care Based Antiretroviral Treatment Versus Hospital Care: a Controlled Prospective Study in Swaziland

Antiretroviral treatment services delivered in hospital settings in Africa increasingly lack capacity to meet demand and are difficult to access by patients. This article evaluates the effectiveness of nurse-led primary care based antiretroviral treatment by comparison with usual hospital care in a typical rural sub Saharan African setting. [from abstract]

Field Epidemiology Training Programmes in Africa: Where Are the Graduates?

There is currently limited published evidence of health-related training programmes in Africa that have produced graduates, who remain and work in their countries after graduation. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that the majority of graduates of field epidemiology training programmes in Africa stay on to work in their home countries, many as valuable resources to overstretched health systems. [from abstract]

Costing the Scaling-Up of Human Resources for Health: Lessons from Mozambique and Guinea Bissau

This paper reports on two separate experiences of human resources development plans costing in Mozambique and Guinea Bissau to provide insight into the practice of costing exercises in information-poor settings and contribute to the existing debate on HRH costing methodologies. [adapted from abstract]

Retraining Due to Illness and Its Implications in Nursing Mangement

The objective of this qualitative study was to understand how nursing professionals coped with job retraining in a public hospital after an illness. [adapted from abstract]

Healthcare Professionals' Intentions to Use Clinical Guidelines: a Survey Using the Theory of Planned Behaviour

This study evaluated which factors affect health professionals’ intentions to use clinical guidelines generally in their decision-making on patient care. [adapted from abstract]

Meeting Human Resources for Health Staffing Goals by 2018: a Quatitatvie Analysis of Policy Options in Zambia

The MOH has developed a human resources for health strategic plan to address the health workforce crisis through improved training, hiring, and retention. This study used a model to forecast the size of the public sector health workforce in Zambia over the next ten years to identify a combination of interventions that would expand the workforce to meet staffing targets. [adapted from abstract]

Impact Evaluation of a Young Medical Volunteers Project for Vietnam Rural Mountain

This study evaluates the health impacts of a volunteer intervention addressing health worker shortage in remote mountainous communities of Vietnam. [from abstract]

Network-Based Social Capital and Capacity-Building Programs: an Example from Ethiopia

This study assessed the social networks in a Master of Hospital and Healthcare Administration program. The authors’ conclusions suggest that intentional social network development may be an important opportunity for capacity-building programs as healthcare systems improve their ability to manage resources and tackle emerging problems. [adapted from introduction]

Nurse Versus Doctor Mangement of HIV-Infected Patients Receiving Antiretroviral Therapy (CUORA-SA): a Randomised Non-Inferiority Trial

Expanded access to combination antiretroviral therapy (ART) in resource-poor settings is dependent on task shifting from doctors to other health-care providers. We compared outcomes of nurse versus doctor management of ART care for HIV-infected patients. [from summary]

Are Village Doctors in Bangladesh a Curse or a Blessing?

This paper investigates the role of various healthcare providers in provision of health services in a remote rural area in Bangladesh. [from abstract]

Motivational Determinants among Physicians in Lahore, Pakistan

This study aimed to identify the determinants of job motivation among physicians, a neglected perspective, especially in developing countries. [from abstract]

Use of RDTs to Improve Malaria Diagnosis and Fever Case Management at Primary Health Care Facilities in Uganda

This study evaluated the effect of malaria rapid diagnostic tests on health workers anti-malarial drug prescriptions among outpatients at low level health care facilities within different malaria epidemiological settings in Uganda. [from abstract]

Scaling Up Integration: Development and Results of a Participatory Assessment of HIV/TB Services, South Africa

In South Africa the need to integrate HIV, TB and STI programmes has been recognised at a policy and organisation level; the challenge is now one of translating policies into relevant actions and monitoring implementation to ensure that the anticipated benefits of integration are achieved. This research set out to determine how middle level managers could be empowered to monitor the implementation of an effective, integrated HIV/TB/STI service. [from abstract]

Community Acceptability of Use of Rapid Diagnostic Tests for Malaria by Community Health Workers in Uganda

This study assessed community acceptability of the use of rapid diagnostic tests by Ugandan community health workers, locally referred to as community medicine distributors. [from abstract]

Effectiveness of a Clinically Relevant Educational Program for Improving Medical Communication and Clinical Skills of International Medical Graduates

The purpose of this study was to assess the efficacy of a clinically relevant educational program to enhance the language proficiency and professionalism of international medical graduates in a Canadian context. [adapted from introduction]

Planning Training Seminars in Palliative Care: a Cross-Sectional Suvey on the Preferences of General Practioners and Nurses in Austria

Against the background of the development of palliative care in Austria the authors undertook this survey to identify the preferences of the general pracitioners’ and nurses’ regarding the specific design of training seminars in palliative care. We wanted to gain a better insight into which educational topics, timeframe, location and group designs are likely to attract a majority of different professional groups. [from author]

Home-Based Voluntary HIV Counselling and Testing Found Highly Acceptable and to Reduce Inequalities

Low uptake of voluntary HIV counselling and testing (VCT) in sub-Saharan Africa is raising acceptability concerns which might be associated with ways by which it is offered. This study investigated the acceptability of home-based delivery of counselling and HIV testing in urban and rural populations in Zambia where VCT has been offered mostly from local clinics. [from abstract]

HRH Country Monitoring

The data presented here in 46 country fact sheets for all countries in the African Region was collected in a comprehensive HRH data collection exercise in 2005. The HRH country fact sheets presented here are intended to give a brief summary of the HRH situation in each country. [publisher’s description]

HRH Country Profiles

The HRH country profiles serve as a tool for systematically presenting the HRH situation, policies and management. They are expected to help to monitor trends, generate regional HRH overviews, provide comparable data between countries and identify points for focused action in countries. They will also serve for a comparison of countries’ responses to similar HRH challenges.

Human Resources for Health and Aid Effectiveness Study in Mozambique

This report presents the results and conclusions of a case study conducted within the broader context of assessing resource flows into the development of human resources for health (HRH). Using the example of Mozambique, it examines whether the emerging policy focus on aid effectiveness responds to the evident needs in scaling up HRH. [from publisher]

Creating an Enabling Environment for Task Shifting in HIV and AIDS Services: Recommendations Based on Two African Case Studies

This document outlines task shifting, its uses, outlines key findings from research case studies in Uganda and Swaziland, and makes recommendations for the way forward. [adapted from author]

Task Shifting in Swaziland

This case study aimed to better understand country-specific policies and regulations on task shifting, health worker attitudes, preferences, required skills, what new types of workers can be brought into the workforce to reduce health manpower deficiencies, and budgetary implications. [adapted from introduction]

Task Shifting in Uganda: Case Study

The objectives of this case study were to understand the policy and programmatic implications of task shifting in relation to the current roles, responsibilities, and workloads of health workers (especially nurses) within the context of providing high-quality HIV services; explore the policy and programmatic implications of task shifting in the utilization of community health workers and/or people living with HIV to provide peer counseling and related services; and assess the attitudes and perceptions of health workers regarding task shifting. [from summary]

Delegation of GP-Home Visits to Qualified Practice Assistants: Assessment of Economic Effects in an Ambulatory Healthcare Centre

This article examines a project to address the decreasing number of general practitioners (GPs) in rural regions in Germany through the delegation of regular GP-home visits to qualified practice assistants. [adapted from abstract]

Human Resources for Health and World Bank Operations in Africa

The purpose of the present paper is to shed light on the treatment of health workforce issues under health sector investments by the World Bank and its African country borrowers and their project agencies. [from introduction]

Medical Education and Training in Nepal: SWOT Analysis

The goal of this article was to analyse the impact of the medical colleges that have been set up within the last two decades by production of doctors and the effect on the health of the people. [from abstract]

Launching Pay for Performance in Ethiopia: Challenges and Lessons Learned

This case study provides an example of a broad public sector pay for performance approach that incorporates intergovernmental transfers in a decentralized context with rewards for concrete health results at the facility level and the challenges of moving from design to implementation. [from author]