The Knowledge library

Policy and Planning

Strengthening School Management: A Guide for Optimizing the Use of Health Workforce Education Resources

Education and training institutions around the globe are struggling to meet the increasing demand for more high-quality health workers. A more business-like approach to operating and managing these institutions would allow schools to produce greater numbers of competent and qualified graduates within budget. This guide includes self-assessment against predefined management standards or good practices, followed by prioritization, goal-setting, planning, implementation, and monitoring of progress. The guide.also provides useful tools to support each step. Learn more about the guide and access tools.
 

Building Human Resources for Health Governance and Leadership Capacity at the Country Level: Approaches, Results, and Recommendations

CapacityPlus used three types of leadership approaches—thought leadership, community leadership, and implementing for results leadership—to develop HRH governance and leadership capacity at the country level. Presented at the Prince Mahidol Award Conference in Bangkok (January 26–31, 2015), this poster summarizes the results and outputs achieved in the Dominican Republic, Ghana, Nigeria, and Uganda.

The Health Workforce Information Ecosystem: Strengthening Connections between Health Workforce Information Domains and e/mHealth Technologies

Health workforce information systems have been proliferating in countries to address different health workforce needs, including management systems in the public and private sector, regulatory information systems including professional council registration and licensure, and training information systems. However, these different systems are not reaching their full potential due to failure to work as an interoperable whole. Presented at the GETHealth Summit in Dublin, Ireland (November 13–14, 2014), this poster describes work to develop a new data exchange standard, Care Services Discovery. This technology is open and collaborative, available for support by a wide variety of technologies, including iHRIS, DHIS 2, and UNICEF’s RapidPro platform. Open source technologies and open standards approaches make a formidable combination to address information needs.

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.

Health Professional School Leadership and Health Sector Reform, Performance, and Practice

In the transition to the post-Millennium Development Goals era, many low and middle-income countries will be making significant shifts in their national health policies. The leadership that is drawn upon to make policy changes tends to be in ministries of health, flagship hospitals, physicians and nurses associations, and social protection entities. Health professional schools are an additional and valuable—yet often overlooked—source of leadership in health reform and health policy-making. This technical brief highlights some examples of how the education and research leadership of health professional schools has engaged, influenced, or obtained resources from national policy-makers and others with significant influence on the health sector. The brief also reviews instances in which different health educational institutions and professional associations have worked to shape national responses to health system needs.

Better Data, Stronger Health Workforce: The Open Source iHRIS Approach

An overview of the free open source iHRIS platform of health workforce information tools and software. The iHRIS software suite consists of five interoperable applications that allow health workforce leaders and managers to plan, develop, and manage a health workforce efficiently and effectively to meet national or institutional health objectives. Read more »

Recruitment of Community Health Workers

This chapter by CapacityPlus/IntraHealth International authors appears in MCHIP’s publication, Developing and Strengthening Community Health Worker Programs at Scale: A Reference Guide and Case Studies for Program Managers and Policymakers, which provides an in-depth review of issues and questions that should be considered when addressing key issues relevant for large-scale community health worker programs. Chapter 8 considers key questions, recommendations, and challenges for community health worker recruitment planning and implementation, including selection, resource availability, and retention.

Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS): A Review across States of India

India faces critical human resources shortages for key cadres such as doctors, specialists, nurses, and midwives. Other key challenges include suboptimal deployment of staff exacerbated by a skewed urban-rural distribution, gaps in certain specialties, and inefficient use of staff due to poor rationalization of tasks. Lack of comprehensive, reliable, and up-to-date data and an absence of commonly agreed definitions and analytical tools make the task of managing the health workforce more difficult. This study reviewed human resources information systems (HRIS) across all 28 states and 7 union territories to assess their purpose, scope, coverage, software technology, usability, and sustainability. The study points out the need for a national HRIS framework to move all states to a web-based platform with common technologies and data structures.