Health Systems Strengthening

The HRH Effort Index: New Indicators to Help Systems Strengthening

CapacityPlus’s Human Resources for Health (HRH) Effort Index is a tool to obtain HRH indicators contributing to health systems strengthening. Shared at the Global Health Mini-University in Washington, DC, on March 2, 2015, this presentation gives an overview of the tool and findings from pilot testing in Kenya and Nigeria.

Dominican Republic Human Resources for Health

The Office of Health Systems in USAID’s Global Health Bureau selected CapacityPlus’s collaboration with the Dominican Republic as one of its Top Ten Health Systems Strengthening Cases. CapacityPlus supported the Ministry of Health in a process of payroll reform and increased transparency in budgeting practices. The process revealed nearly 10,000 ghost workers—individuals who receive a salary but are not working—who represented approximately 30% of the Ministry’s budget. The Ministry began a phased approach to clean its payroll by reclaiming the salaries of the ghost workers, resulting in savings of over $6 million annually. These savings are being used to improve HIV and other health services through hiring of new health workers, increasing salaries by 10% to provide more equitable remuneration and increase motivation, eliminating user fees, and investing in other health sector reforms, such as setting up a better procurement process for HIV testing kits and antiretroviral drugs. In turn, this reinvestment is contributing to improved service delivery and health status.

The Composition of the Social Service Workforce in HIV/AIDS-Affected Contexts

The social service workforce plays an invaluable role in supporting, protecting, and advocating for vulnerable children and families. This technical report describes the composition of the social service workforce drawn from several sources of data, including a literature review primarily focused on workforce issues in HIV/AIDS-impacted countries in sub-Saharan Africa. It is intended to help the field move toward a common understanding of functions associated with different cadres within the social service workforce, titles associated with workers who perform these functions, and education or training that is typically associated with these cadres. Taking into consideration the differences across countries, the authors propose additional emphasis on some broad areas—including examples of promising practices—that will help to clarify the composition of social service workforce. A more in-depth look at how public-sector social service workers are classified in Kenya is available as an annex.

Gender and Health Systems Strengthening

This free course on the Global Health eLearning Center is authored by CapacityPlus’s Constance Newman of IntraHealth International. The course is intended to assist USAID field-based health officers, foreign service nationals, and US government partners to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment in health systems strengthening efforts. By the end of the course, the learner will understand how health systems components interact with each other, how gender plays a role in each health systems component, and how to address these gender issues in health systems strengthening activities in order to improve health and social outcomes. CapacityPlus’s Crystal Ng and Ann Yang of IntraHealth International served as course managers along with Nandini Jayarajan and Lisa Mwaikambo of JHU∙CCP.

Health Informatics Education and Training Programs: Important Factors to Consider

Health informatics is of growing importance in efforts to improve health outcomes across the globe, involving many components of health systems. It is primarily concerned with the process of making health-related data accessible and useful for evidence-based decision-making. To take advantage of the potential advantages offered by health informatics, health workers must be able to access relevant data and be comfortable with its application. Therefore, preservice education and in-service training in information technology should be part of the national investment in health systems. This technical brief introduces the concept of health informatics and describes the considerations to be kept in mind when designing education and training programs for health informatics.

Les organisations confessionnelles

Comment les gouvernements peuvent-ils travailler avec les organisations confessionnelles pour renforcer le personnel de santé ?

Human Resources for Health Professional Development at the District Level: Recommendations Based on the Ugandan Experience

Many countries have committed to a process of decentralizing a range of human resources for health (HRH) responsibilities, decisions, and authorities to subnational or district levels. Such decentralization requires political and organizational adjustments in the way the health care workforce is managed at the subnational level. Health leaders and managers in a decentralized system need to be skilled in such areas as workforce planning, recruitment, deployment, performance management, and retention. Uganda is one country that has embarked on a program to strengthen HRH leadership and management at the district level. This report shares lessons learned from Uganda and—using this experience as a foundation—offers selected suggestions for how other countries might develop and implement HRH professional development programs at subnational levels.

Human Resources Management Assessment Approach

HRM Assessment ApproachStrengthening the human resources management (HRM) of the health workforce is essential to improve the quality of family planning, HIV/AIDS, maternal and child health, and other key services, and to ensure that global investments to increase the number of trained health workers are supported and sustained. The Human Resources Management Assessment Approach is designed to guide policy-makers, managers, and human resources practitioners toward better understanding and responding to the HRM challenges facing their health systems. The approach promotes the collection and analysis of information on defined HRM challenges and informs the development of policy, strategy, systems, and process interventions to respond to challenges in four key areas of HRM: health workforce planning and implementation, work environment and conditions, human resources information systems, and performance management.

Faith-Based Organizations

How can governments work with faith-based organizations (FBOs) to strengthen the health workforce? This brief presents an overview of the issue of FBOs and human resources for health along with suggested actions, key considerations, and resources. Also available in French.

Gestión de recursos humanos

¿Cómo podemos fortalecer los sistemas que los trabajadores de salud necesitan para funcionar con eficacia?

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