Documents & Reports

This study focused on the positive traits and strategies exhibited by high-performing facilities to determine how to improve performance at average and low-performing sites. [from author]

Liverpool Associates in Tropical Health has been teaching, researching and consulting in HRH throughout the changing global and country contexts for almost two decades. This overview paper highlights the changes that we have observed over time, in both the attention paid to workforce issues and the types of activities that we have seen. [from author]

The purpose of this document is to provide a process, methodology and tools for assessing government human resource capacity to lead and manage an effective implementation of the NPA.

Strategic planning helps an organization make fundamental decisions about its human resources by taking a long-range view of what it hopes to achieve and, in broad terms, how. [author’s description]

Positive practice environments are settings that support excellence and decent work. In particular, they strive to ensure the health, safety and personal well-being of staff, support quality patient care and improve the motivation, productivity and performance of individuals and organisations. [from author]

The Capacity Project is applying an integrated strategy to strengthen family planning (FP) and reproductive health. The project is helping the Ministry of Health develop the capacity of the clinical workforce to provide a full range of FP methods and services at 13 hospitals and 146 health centers. [adapted from author]

This document asks how leadership contributes to measurable changes in organizational performance and how to evaluate the outcomes of leadership development programs in developing countries.

In order to gain an understanding of the total health workforce in Swaziland, The Capacity Project worked with senior leaders of the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare to develop a program to strengthen the country’s human resources information systems. [from author]

This brief provides a list of facility-based data collection tools that have been developed by the World Health Organization and other partners. The resources can be used to meet a wide range of specific information needs on human resources in health systems. [adapted from summary]

This document reports on the findings of three projects in Canada that link population health needs to health human resource planning, to illustrate the value and challenges in using health human resource data to inform policy decisions on nursing productivity and to generate evidence based retention policies to guide nursing workforce sustainability. [adapted from summary]

It has been shown that, internationally, medical students of rural origin are more likely to practice in a rural area after graduation, but this has not been demonstrated in South Africa before. This study aimed to investigate the career choices of medical graduates of rural origin in the South African context, and to determine what proportion of rural origin students are currently practicing in a rural area. [from abstract]

This document outlines three major human resources for health challenges related to family planning and reproductive health. Several possible solutions are suggested, including: increasing task shifting, workforce planning, and partnerships. [adapted from publisher]

This paper addresses the influence of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on the health workforce. An overview of the impact of HIV/AIDS on health systems is provided, with a focus on developing countries. Other topics include the impact of HIV/AIDS on morbidity and mortality among staff in Africa; the impact of HIV/AIDS on workforce motivation, performance and migration; and future staffing scenarios and potential obstacles. [adapted from author]

This report assesses the business development needs, particularly financial and training, of private health care providers and distributors of reproductive health and family planning products and services in Romania. [adapted from author]

This report describes opportunities for engaging and supporting a well managed and effectively regulated private sector to improve the region’s health. This report highlights the critical role the private sector can play in meeting health care needs in Sub-Saharan Africa. It also identifies policy changes that governments and international donors can make to enable the private sector to take on an ever more meaningful role in closing Africa’s health care gap. [adapted from publisher]

This paper looks at reproductive health and family planning programs in the Eastern Europe and Eurasian region. It includes: a methodology to analyze the RH/FP market; an overview of opportunities and constraints to the private sector region; a description of current practices in the region that foster a greater private sector role in the provision of FP services and products; and recommendations for leveraging and maximizing private sector contribution to RH/FP goals. [adapted from author]

The goal of this study was to develop and test a way to establish, monitor, and predict the need for nursing services by using the health needs of the population. This study explored the relationship between the health needs of Ontarians, their use of community and hospital nursing services, and variations in outcomes. The findings suggest that decisions about the deployment of nursing resources are associated with differences in outcomes. [adapted from author]

In order to highlight the driving forces determining the international allocation of medical personnel, the cases of four countries (the Philippines and South Africa as source countries, and Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom as destination countries) are examined. The paper concludes that changes in demand generated in major destination countries determine the international allocation of medical personnel at least in the short run. [from abstract]

Faith-based organizations are a key link in the sustainability of accessible health services. In many African countries, they have been providing health care for over 60 years and in some, such as Kenya, for a century or more.

The shortage of well-trained health workers is global, but low- and middle-income countries where HIV and AIDS are taking the greatest toll feel the crisis most acutely. This report provides examples and statistics about the potential for task shifting to help with the problem of health worker shortages. [adapted from author]

This brief describes the Capacity Project’s work with health workforce planning using HRIS in Rwanda.

This paper examines recent experiences in Zambia, and Ethiopia that illustrate why policy matters for developing the private health sector and underscoring the need for rational regulatory policies and practices. [author’s description]

One major challenge for all countries is to establish workforce planning mechanisms that effectively meet the demands for health care and provide workforce stability. However, few nations have developed strategic plans for meeting nursing resource requirements that effectively address supply and demand. Instead, many developed countries choose to implement short term policy levers such as increased reliance on immigration, sometimes to the detriment of developing countries.

In both Asia and Latin America, community-based health workers have been trained in safe injection techniques and routinely provide injectable contraception. However, the African continent still resists this service delivery mechanism with the rationale that it is unsafe for clients to receive injections from paramedical personnel. This argument is weakening, however, as non-reusable syringes become the norm and with the recent development of a checklist, based on the latest WHO Medical Eligibility Criteria, for safe provision of DMPA by community-based agents.

This report first reviews the policy and programmatic challenges of weak health systems, health care worker shortages, and related issues in HIV/AIDS affected countries, and concludes by outlining three key options for strengthening health systems during PEPFAR’s next five-year phase. [from introduction]

The goal of the human resources development policy is to ensure availability of suitably qualified appropriately skilled and motivated human resource for health at appropriate geographic level of pre-defined disciplines, for provision of essential health services of acceptable quality at affordable cost to the community. [author’s description]

In [Tanzania’s] response to HIV, the Ministry has deemed its shortfall in human resources for health (HRH) as an emergency. To begin to address this gap, the Ministry is expanding antiretroviral therapy services through an Emergency Hiring Program that will bring 365 new health workers to 25 underserved districts in two phases. The first phase, now underway, will place 176 new hires in 19 districts. [author’s description]

To foster a global exchange of human resources for health (HRH) evidence, tools and innovation, the Capacity Project created a searchable collection of HRH resources with librarian support. Launched in May 2006, the HRH Global Resource Center now has over 1,500 resources to support HRH in developing countries and help the health community address workforce challenges. [author’s description]

The disparity is staggering. Africa bears one-quarter of the burden of disease around the world yet has barely 3 percent of all health workers. Millions of people across the continent thus suffer needlessly because they cannot obtain medical care from trained personnel. In sub-Saharan Africa, where the crisis is most acute, fully 820,000 additional doctors, nurses, and midwives are needed to provide even the most basic health services. To meet this shortfall, most of the region’s countries would have to increase the size of their health workforce by 140 percent. [author’s description]

This report summarizes studies that examined the geographical distribution or mobility of a wide variety of health care providers in Canada. [adapted from introduction]