Human Resources for Health

Supporting Country-Led Efforts to Recruit and Retain Health Workers and Improve Productivity

CapacityPlus built the capacity of national human resources for health (HRH) leaders and managers in Uganda, Laos, and Malawi to use the project’s retention and productivity tools to generate evidence and inform decisions to influence policy-making and improve the availability of services through increased staffing and distribution.

Professionalizing Under-Recognized Cadres to Strengthen Health Systems

CapacityPlus raised awareness of the need to professionalize under-recognized cadres of health workers that play essential roles in well-functioning health systems, including contributing to the launch of global coalitions and tools to strengthen and support the supply chain and social service workforces.

Building the Knowledge Base: Monitoring and Evaluation and the HRH Effort Index

CapacityPlus improved human resources for health (HRH) measurement and monitoring and evaluation capacity at the country level and developed an HRH Effort Index for national and subnational application to spur policy changes and enable cross-country comparisons.
 

Estimating the Institutional Costs of Educating and Training Health Workers: Preservice Education Costing Methodology and Instruments

CapacityPlus designed a costing study approach to: 1) estimate the financial costs to an educational institution and its associated clinical practice facilities of producing a graduate of a specific academic program; 2) identify the resource constraints to producing sufficient numbers of quality graduates; and 3) simulate the potential new unit cost to the educational institution and its associated clinical practice facilities if a scenario of interventions were introduced to increase the quantity and/or quality of graduates. The approach applies an Excel-based costing model and data collection instruments to analyze preservice education costing data derived from information about enrollment levels, curriculum data, school expenditures, payroll, available infrastructure and equipment, and others. Read more »

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.

Developing a Human Resources for Health (HRH) Effort Index to Measure Country-Level Inputs in HRH

Current indicators used to measure efforts and progress in HRH are limited and often unreliable. These limitations constrain country, donor, and program efforts to identify and address gaps in HRH and to track progress over time. CapacityPlus developed the HRH Effort Index to enable countries, program implementers, and donors to more readily assess and measure national HRH inputs and potentially to predict workforce performance, service use, and quality. Presented at the Third Global Symposium on Health Systems Research in Cape Town, South Africa, on October 2, 2014, this poster presents preliminary results of pilot testing of the HRH Effort Index in Kenya and Nigeria in May and June 2014.

Partnering with African Faith-Based Organizations for a Strong Health Workforce

Faith-based organizations (FBOs) make immense contributions to the health sector in many parts of the world. Yet they are often not integrated into planning and resource allocations for national health systems, leading to service and system redundancies and gaps. FBOs also face numerous human resources for health (HRH) challenges, similar to other public- and private-sector institutions providing health services. The Africa Christian Health Associations Platform (ACHAP) has strengthened its members’ capacities to address HRH challenges with support from CapacityPlus. This technical brief presents examples from ACHAP members’ efforts to strengthen HRH and integrate FBOs into national health systems and the HRH community. The brief highlights achievements in selected areas, provides lessons learned, and offers seven key recommendations for furthering FBOs’ efforts.

Transitioning Health Care Worker Support: A Resource Framework from the PEPFAR Experience

To expand access to HIV/AIDS prevention, care, and treatment services, the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) has been partially or wholly supporting health workers in over 30 countries. To assist PEPFAR country teams to work with stakeholders and transition health worker support to country-owned entities, USAID and CapacityPlus conducted key informant interviews in countries where transition was underway. The interviews led to the development of the Health Care Worker Transition Framework and an interactive website that compiles key questions, case studies, lessons learned, tools, and resources to encourage PEPFAR country team engagement and discussions on transition. Recognizing that the transition process is complex and nonlinear, five interlinked components should be incorporated according to context: stakeholder engagement, strategic information, finance, policy, and human resources management. Presented at the 20th International AIDS Conference in Melbourne, Australia, on July 24, 2014, this poster summarizes the five elements of the framework along with key questions and sample resources.

Establishing and Using Data Standards in Health Workforce Information Systems

Human resources information systems are successful when they support policy and management decisions and when those decisions lead to better health care. However, success depends on the quality of the human resources for health data going into the system. The aim of this technical brief is to convey why data standards matter. The authors review organizational, national, and international data standards that can help ensure data quality, provide country examples, and discuss the key role of multisectoral stakeholder leadership groups in formulating and reaching consensus on standards.

Applying the Workload Indicators of Staffing Need (WISN) Method in Namibia: Challenges and Implications for Human Resources for Health Policy

This article provides a comprehensive overview of the first-ever national application of the Workload Indicators of Staffing Need (WISN) tool developed by the World Health Organization. The article describes the steps involved in implementing WISN, a human resources management tool, in Namibia, discusses software and data challenges, summarizes key findings relating to health worker shortages and inequities, and reviews the utility of the WISN findings for policy-makers in Namibia. The authors observe that the WISN method can offer credible workload-based evidence to improve the equity and distribution of health workers within a region or across similar types of facilities nationwide. Perhaps most importantly, the WISN tool allows policy-makers to consider the potential impact of decisions on staff requirements before actually making the decisions.

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