Documents & Reports

Task shifting should not be viewed as a panacea for the human resources challenges facing sub-Saharan Africa. Rather, it must be part of an overall strategy that includes measures to increase, retain, and sustain health staff. [from author]

Health human resources are now a high priority on the political agenda. It is within this context that policy makers, planners and managers have turned their attention to identifying and implementing incentive systems which will be effective in improving the recruitment and retention of health care personnel. [from abstract]

This report describes the second phase of a study that developed and tested an integrated program of counselor job aids, mother take-home materials, and counselor training in a healthcare site providing counseling for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV (PMTCT) in Moshi District in the Kilimanjaro Region of Tanzania. [from executive summary]

This brief will discuss the concepts of data quality and provide examples of the importance of data management specific to the field of HRH, illustrated by the Capacity Project’s experience with HRIS strengthening in developing countries. [from introduction]

Contracting NGOs to manage the primary health care system was found to be an effective means to increase service coverage and achieve a more pro-poor distribution of services in rural areas of Cambodia. The Ministry of Health (MOH) proposed contracting NGOs to manage the public health care system at the district level using a results-based contract to monitor progress.

The Private Sector Partnerships-One (PSP-One) project fielded an assessment team to document the state of operations for the Biruh Tesfa network, identify strategies to improve network sustainability, and determine local organizations that could have a role in network management and support. In addition the team was asked to explore opportunities to integrate HIV services into the Biruh Tesfa network. [from abstract]

The Commercial Market Strategies project (CMS) developed a network of youth-friendly pharmacies to provide reproductive health information and contraceptives to youth in Guanajuato, Mexico. The network involved the commercial sector in providing reproductive health and family planning services, as well as respecting youths’
privacy and reducing their potential embarrassment when obtaining those services. [from abstract]

This document is the result of an assessment of the private sector in Nigeria for the provision of reproductive health and family planning products and services. [from abstract]

The world is facing a devastating heal worker shortage. This is one of the critical bottlenecks to reaching international health and development goals, including the goal of universal access to HIV treatment, prevention, care and support. Conversely, the HIV epidemic has further exacerbated the health workforce crisis.

Malawi’s health human resources initiatives since the late 1990s provide a good example of a comprehensive national scale-up plan for the health workforce. Its Emergency Human Resources Plan has shown modest but promising results. Health worker attrition remains high and tutor supply low, but training capacity has been substantially expanded and Malawi is expected to begin meeting training output targets in 2008. [from introduction]

This study was conducted to identify determinants, benchmarks and indicators of the costs and benefits and distributional impact of the migration of human resources for health on health services in Kenya and to make policy proposals for intervention. [from abstract]

This paper examines health workforce and migration policies in New Zealand, with a special focus on the international recruitment of doctors and nurses. [from abstract]

Most Central American hospitals that provide decentralized HIV services struggle with issues such as weak infection prevention practices, poor nutritional care and persistent discriminatory practices. The Capacity Project is helping national HIV programs in Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Panama to improve performance and supervision systems that will help address these issues. [from author]

This paper maps the context of how gender shapes provider-client interaction and the impact of these interactions; provides a detailed breakdown of the nature of provider-patient interactions and how gender impacts on these interactions from the perspective of patients and providers; and reviews gender-specific policies and program interventions within the health system for improving the interpersonal dimension of health care and hence quality of care. [adapted from executive summary]

This report summarizes key results of the evaluation of a distance learning course in the Standard Days Method. This course responds to a growing demand for low-cost options to training for family planning service providers. This option was considered as a potentially useful alternative to traditional class-room training, which can be both costly and time-consuming. [adapted from abstract]

The Knowledge Improvement Tool (KIT) was created to allow family planning supervisors to quickly identify gaps in knowledge of Standard Days Method (SDM) providers, allowing them to provide targeted, effective support during routine supervisory visits. This study was designed to compare the effectiveness and the cost benefit of KIT to other methods of reinforcing SDM provider knowledge. [adapted from author]

The PARiHS framework (Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services) has proved to be a useful practical and conceptual heuristic for many researchers and practitioners in framing their research or knowledge translation endeavors. However, as a conceptual framework it still remains untested and therefore its contribution to the overall development and testing of theory in the field of implementation science is largely unquantified.

This paper provides an integrated summary of the conceptual and theoretical thinking thus far regarding PARiHS. It introduces a typology used to distinguish between the terms conceptual framework, theory and model

The purpose of this study was to identify and recommend strategies for tackling the underlying issues in the human resources for health (HRH) management process in Uganda with an eye towards addressing the HRH crisis. [from executive summary]

Planning the supply of and demand for human resources for health is a significant challenge for most countries. Workforce shortages, underemployment and unemployment, skill-mix imbalances and geographical maldistribution are among some of the critical challenges at national level and within organizations Health human resources planning is essential for countries and systems to ensure the presence of workforces capable of meeting the needs of populations. [from author]

This brief describes PATH’s project to implement supportive supervision techniques to improve health worker training in Indonesia.

This document discusses the issues surrounding human resources for health and how they impact health system performance.

The WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean held a regional consultation on the accreditation of health professions education. The objectives of the meeting were to enable countries of the Eastern Mediterranean Region to exchange experience in establishing national systems of accreditation, identifying strengths and constraints, and to formulate region- and country-specific plans of action for establishing accreditation of health professions education. [from author]

The community score card process is a community-based monitoring tool that is a hybrid of the techniques of social audits and citizen report cards.The CSC is an instrument to exact social and public accountability and responsiveness from service providers. By linking service providers to the community, citizens are empowered to provide immediate feedback to service providers. [from author]

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]

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.

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]

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

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

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.

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]