HRH Overview Documents

This book addresses key issues that countries face today in building, retaining, and deploying a competent and skilled workforce in an increasingly globalized environment. The authors examine critical issues and discuss how countries and stakeholders are incorporating innovative responses to the health workforce supply and demand challenges of the 21st century. [from preface]

This document explores lessons learned from health related MDGs, the priority health agenda for the 15 years after 2015, bridging health workforce gaps to achieve universal health coverage and indicators and targets for health. [adapted from author]

This free training module is designed for people who wish to acquire introductory knowledge about HRH. It provides an overview of related topics that forms the larger context of HRH. It is also designed to serve as a refresher module to those who have more advanced knowledge in HRH.

The author posits that the evaluation of discrete choice experiments for recruitment and retention of health workers and other experiments, including an articulated research agenda, can allow the development of policy and program options to deal with a golbal health workforce crisis that has curtailed the capacity of national health systems to improve the health of their populations. [adapted from author]

This 54 minute video shares a presentation from Uganda’s Dr. Edward Mukooza. Drawing on his first-hand experience of serving as principal of the International Christian Medical Institute and of training and mentoring hundreds of health workers currently working at all levels of Uganda’s health system, Dr. Mukooza addresses the current status of human resources for health in Uganda. [adapted from publisher

In this short video, Ugandan health workers, managers, and leaders show how the country’s efforts to strengthen its health workforce and increase access to quality care are paying off—and how service delivery has improved. [adapted from publisher]

In this short, 2 minute video, Charmaine Pattinson of the Clinton Health Access Initiative discusses the need for increasing human resources for health in the developing world. [from publisher]

This 4.5 minute video talks about the HRH issues and the importance of strengthening HRH for health services in Cote d’Ivoire and a Health Systems 20/20 project that worked with in-country partners to improve production of health workers, create incentives to motivate health workers to move to the underserved north, and build health management capacity. [adapted from publisher]

This 3 minute video is from the 2013 Women Deliver conference where Save the Children’s EVERY ONE campaign spoke with Dr. Muhammad Ali Pate, Minister of State for Health, Nigeria; Anuradha Gupta, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Health, India and Dr. Awa Coll-Seck, Minister of Health, Senegal on why trained health workers are critical to achieving the Millenium Development Goals.

This dossier is about human resources for health (HRH), an essential part of health systems, and aims to provide background information on the field. [adapted from author]

Despite advances, insufficient progress has been made in implementing HRH interventions to improve access to qualified health workers. This qualitative study was conducted to determine the factors that define the enabling environment for successful implementation of HRH interventions in three countries: Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. [from publisher]

To address the lack of information to guide the development of policies and programs on HRH, this book aims to paint a comprehensive picture on HRH, consolidating new and existing evidence. The book highlights in particular new evidence on some of the underlying determinants impacting stock, distribution and performance of health workers in Ghana, including health worker production and attrition, management and accountability structures, the capacity of health training institutions, and health worker compensation. [from author]

This book sheds light on the status of health worker need, supply, and distribution across Africa. It analyzes regional and country data to address six key issues: the specific levels of human resources for health in Africa; differences in human resources for health across countries; changing roles of the public and private sector in the healthworker market; motivation for health worker performance; health worker training; and producing health workers. [adapted from author]

This document outlines the current main issues for human resources for health and the impact of these challenges on health service delivery, particularly of HIV treatment.

This video series from CapacityPlus has short, informal interviews with health workers in different countries to help users learn about the issues and inspirations of those working at the frontline of health service delivery.

This interactive infographic illustrates the statistics for countries with critical health worker shortages as defined by the World Health Organization. [adapted from publisher]

This toolkit brings together a set of existing tools that are in use for various aspects of country level HRH development, including situation analysis, planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. The toolkit is meant to help the countries in developing, implementing, and monitoring evidence-based HRH plans. It may also be used by those wishing to review or validate their current HRH plans and interventions. [from publisher]

This literature review sought evidence to better understand the lack of progress in solving the crisis in human resources for health despite known interventions: delegating tasks, investments in training, and upgrading health workers. It also addresses the lack of funding and political will to act in this field. [adapted from publisher]

This report contains the proceedings of a meeting of 18 francophone and Spanish-speaking countries in Africa focusing on the HRH crisis. It outlines common challenges faced by the countries concerned and provides suggestions on the role of regional entities and development partners. [from publisher]

This brief outlines the issues surrounding constraints in the health workforce which have emerged as a key obstacle to scaling-up access to prevention and treatment for the 5.7 million people currently living with HIV/AIDS in South Africa. [adapted from summary]

The lack of human resources in the health sector in developing countries is not new. The shortage became a crisis few years after the Millenium Declaration as countries found it difficult to meet the Millennium Development Goals owing to the shortage of health workers.­ The causes of the shortage are multiple and complex, involving management, training and staff distribution issues, as well as migration of workers from the public sector to the private sector, from rural areas to the cities and from one country to another. [from abstract]

This paper provides an introduction to the terms and tools of labour market analysis, connects these labour market principles to real-world case studies from low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). The data needed to examine labour markets is also noted to allow human resource practitioners to begin their own empirical examination of health worker labour markets in LMIC. [adapted from introduction]

This booklet provides an overview of capacity development and some basic definitions; highlights examples of practice in action from the field; and a series of tools and resources useful for developing and implementing capacity development programs. The case studies include examples such as health provider training to meet the needs of young people in Guyana, telemedicing in Mongolia, and investing in midwives and midwifery. [adapted from author]

The Global Health Workforce Alliance, a partnership dedicated to identifying and coordinating solutions to the health workforce crisis, produced this report of the HRH activities and progress of the last five years and the refocusing of its efforts for the next five years. Topics include: health workforce at the heart of global agendas; accelerating country actions; promoting evidence-based HRH solutions; and supporting core health management functions. [adapted from author]

The shortage of human resources in health (HRH) in Africa remains severe and continues to be a major impediment to increasing coverage of HIV-related services. This eToolkit is meant to serve as a resource for those dealing with aspects of the HRH crisis, including individuals and organizations who wish to familiarize themselves with the various components of HRH, focusing primarily on Southern Africa. [adapted from author]

This document reviews the current human resources for health situation in Ethiopia, summarizes the evidence on population use of select health services, and offers relevant policy options to assist the government finalize its new human resources strategy and address remaining health challenges. [from summary]

This paper considers current HRH issues within pacific island countries from the perspectives of people who manage HRH within their country health ministry. The aim of this paper is to document and highlight their key areas of common concern. [from introduction]

This project brief describes the HRH challenges in Kenya, and the work being done to strengthen HRH policies and practices, build the knowledge and skills of health workers, and improve workforce performance systems. [adapted from author]

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]

This issue brief details the importance of investing in frontline health workers and officially launches the Frontline Health Workers Coalition. [from publisher]