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Performance Incentives for Improved Maternal Health: Experiences, Challenges, Lessons

This document analalyzes the effectiveness of performance incentive schemes in developing countries that comprise maternal health components, including family planning. [adapted from author]

Influence of the Service Delivery Environment on Family Planning Outcomes in Nigeria

This paper examined the association of the family planning service delivery environment with contraceptive outcomes among males and females in five states of Nigeria, including the impact of health worker training in family planning, and the effect of the provider-client interaction on uptake of modern methods. [adapted from abstract]

Community Health Workers: An Important Resource Towards Achieving the MDGs

Based on lessons learned from Tanzania, this resource advocates for the integration of community health workers (CHWs) into the revised HRH strategic framework, including the development of new strategies to enable CHWs to contribute more effectively to improved maternal and newborn health outcomes. [adapted from author]

Building the Capacity of Kenyan Nurses through eLearning: The AMREF Experience

This report details an eLearning intervention for nurses in Kenya to improve the standards of nursing care by equipping enrolled nurses with the skills to manage new and re-emerging diseases, address the shortage of qualified nurses in Kenya, improve quality of care and achieve health-related Millennium Development Goals. [adapted from author]

Retention of Clinical Officers in Southern Sudan: A Tracer Study of Maridi National Health Training Institute Graduates

The overall goal of the post-graduation tracer survey was to determine the proportion of graduates still working in Southern Sudan, where they have been deployed, their specific duties, and the perceptions of the graduates on the effectiveness of the training program in preparing them for their duties. [adapted from author]

Valuing Health Workers: VSO Health Advocacy Strategy 2009-2014

The advocacy strategy was launched to contribute to the overall achievement stronger, more inclusive and accessible health systems. It aims to raise awareness of the critical shortage of human resources for health in developing countries and bring the voices and expertise of health workers to the attention of policy makers to suggest solutions. [adapted from summary]

Brain Gain: Making Health Worker Migration Work for Rich and Poor Countries

This paper is the outcome of a series of in-depth interviews and group discussions with over 100 African health workers and others at the grassroots to understand their experiences of migration and their ideas for solutions to it. [from summary]

Health Workers in Fragile States: The Case for Investment

This document outlines the important role health workers play in areas suffering from severe crises and makes the case for investing in HRH as central to health system recovery and improved health outcomes. [adapted from author]

Valuing Health Workers: Implementing Sustainable Interventions to Improve Health Worker Motivation

The focus of this study has been to identify the most common causes for the health worker high attrition rate and poor motivation within the health sector, and look at the various solutions that are possible. It brings together the findings of many relevant studies by other authors and identifies the most common reasons for high attrition rates. [adapted from summary]

Valuing Health Workers in Cambodia

The objectives of the research are to come to a better understanding of why health workers adopt behaviours that impact negatively on patients and to look for solutions in policy and practice to improve staff motivation and morale. [from author]

Ugandan Health Workers Speak: The Rewards and the Realities

This report is based on the accounts of 90 Ugandan health workers at the front line. The research explored with them the rewards and the challenges, explanations for perceived poor practices and promising solutions. The interim findings focus on the rewards of being a health worker and how low pay affects them. [from introduction]

Educating a New Generation of Doctors to Improve the Health of Populations in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

This article specifically addresses the need for a transformative approach to medical education—one that is defined by a commitment to social responsibility and insists on inter-sectoral engagement to determine how students are recruited, educated, and deployed as doctors. [from author]

Community Health Workers and Health Educators: Building Understanding and Partnerships in Education

This webinar’s presentation includes: defining the community health worker (CHW), case study of a CHW, CHW core roles and competencies, core values and code of ethics, and CHW-health educator partnership opportunities. [from author]

Community Health Workers: Social Justice and Policy Advocates for Community Health and Well-Being

This article argues that community health workers can connect people to health care and collect information relevant to policy. As a result of direct interaction with the populations they serve, they can recount the realities of exclusion and propose remedies for it, contribute to best practices, and inform public policy. [adapted from abstract]

Honouring Heroes in Health

This short film, produced by the Global Health Workforce Alliance, portrays Mary, a midwife from Kenya and Elina, a trainee doctor from Nepal, two outstanding health workers who dedicate their lives to serving people in rural and remote areas of their respective countries. [from publisher]

Study on Health Extension Workers: Access to Information, Continuing Education and Reference Materials

This study was undertaken to make a clear needs assessment, define priorities and identify resources to plan appropriate continuing education programs and prepare reference materials for health workers, particularly with the deployment of 30,000 health extension workers which will create additional information access needs in Ethiopia. [adapted from abstract]

Study of the Working Conditions of Health Extension Workers in Ethiopia

The study focuses on the first batch of Ethiopian Health Extension Workers (HEWs) with the overall objective of assessing the working conditions of HEWs and their job satisfaction. [from abstract]

Denying Reality No Longer an Option: Stark HR Report

The report takes a look at the haemorrhaging general pracitioner and specialist cadres and the skeletal, ageing and special skills-starved nursing sector in what it describes as South Africa’s “failing health system.” [adapted from abstract]

Reproductive Health Services in Malawi: An Evaluation of a Quality Improvement Intervention

The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of a quality improvement initiative for reproductive health providers on service qualtiy and related outcomes. [adapted from abstract]

Building on the Current Evidence to Strengthen Community-Based Service Delivery Strategies for Promoting Child Survival

This document highlights four community-based health delivery strategies that have demonstrated improvements in child health in high-mortality, low-resource settings and supports the growing recognition that community programs that reach beyond the walls of health care facilities and involve community members as partners have a great potential for further reducing child mortality at low cost. [adapated from author]

Postpartum Family Planning for Community Health Workers

This learning resource package contains the trainer manual with all the material to design and hold a traning course for community health workers on postpartum family planing methods and counselling skills. It also has a participant manual for use during the training.

Increasing the Number of Rural Physicians

This article discusses the issues facing rural physicians, analyzes efforts to recruit and retain them, and outlines what it will require to increase their numbers.

Using Information and Communication Technology to Revitalise Continuing Professional Development for Rural Health Professionals: Evidence from a Pilot Project

This article outlines a project and its evaluation that used ICT equipment to increase the uptake of continuing professional development training in Uganda. [adapted from abstract]

Bright Future for Rural Health: Evidence-Based Policy and Practice in Rural and Remote Australian Health Care

These case studies from accross Austraila show how rural and remote health professionals are making a difference locally and give insights, approaches and solutions to similar challenges or problems faced elsewhere. Evaluated solutions for many pressing health issues are presented as well as two big policy issues: building sustainable rural primary health care services, and responding to an ageing health workforce. [adapted from foreword]

Textbook of Australian Rural Health

This text describes how rural health professionals and rural communities are currently working towards healthy communities. Significant rural issues are analysed with regard to professional practice and personal lifestyles, as well as how these issues could be addressed by innovative future practice or how they present challenges for learning or teaching. [adapted from author]

Taking the Pulse of Policy: The Policy Implementation Assessment Tool

The Policy Implementation Assessment Tool, user-friendly approach and tool for assessing policy implementation, comprises two interview guides that explore the perspectives of policymakers and program implementers, including community-level health workers, local leaders, and clients. This document provides guidance to help readers adapt the tool to different policies and contexts in their own countries. [adapted from introduction]

Art of Moving from Policy to Action: Lessons Learned from the USAID Health Policy Initiative (2005-2010)

The aim of this paper is to demystify policy implementation and provide user-friendly advice on translating policies into action. To do so, the paper presents experiences and lessons learned from the Health Policy Initiative organized around the project’s Policy-to-Action Framework. [from summary]

Networking for Policy Change: What Works

This paper presents case studies of networks in 11 countries assisted by the POLICY Project to demonstrate how reproductive health advocacy networks were influential actors that played a role in fostering significant policy changes over the past decade. [from summary]

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]