The Knowledge library

HR Management

Improved Human Resources for Health Policies and their Effects on the Christian Health Association of Kenya

CapacityPlus conducted an evaluation of Christian Health Association of Kenya (CHAK)  facilities that participated in the nationwide adoption by CHAK and the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops of a comprehensive policy on human resources for health (HRH) (supported by USAID through the Capacity Project and subsequently through CapacityPlus and the bilateral Capacity Kenya project). The evaluation confirmed important changes in CHAK's institutional capacity, HRH culture, and management practices.

Strengthening Human Resources Management and Leadership

CapacityPlus expanded the evidence base for the importance of human resources management (HRM) and leadership; a compelling case study is the Dominican Republic, which implemented a comprehensive program of HRM strengthening that demonstrates how such an effort can contribute to long-term policy improvements, cost savings, and increased accessibility and use of HIV/AIDS, family planning, and other key services.

The People That Deliver Initiative: Namibia’s Integrated Actions to Improve the Health Supply Chain Management Workforce

In November 2013, Namibia's Minister of Health presented a formal request to the People that Deliver (PtD) Board and member institutions for technical support to develop a sustainable strategy to improve access to health commodities. Led by the government of Namibia and supported by expertise from the People that Deliver Initiative and its members, notably the USAID- and PEPFAR-funded Supply Chain Management System project and CapacityPlus, the PtD-Namibia collaboration sought to understand and improve Namibia’s public sector health supply chain management workforce, focusing on the Ministry of Health and Social Services' immediate priority: staff at the central medical store and regional medical depots. This synthesis report documents the PtD-Namibia collaboration’s findings and outcomes in five priority activity areas as well as its collective results, all of which have great potential to have a positive impact on the country’s supply chain management workforce development and planning.

Ramping Up Public Health Supply Chain Workforce Management Skills: Lessons Learned in Latin America and the Caribbean

In response to the evident need for building up the supply chain management workforce, the USAID Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean provided financial support to CapacityPlus to enhance capacities in Central American countries. The project coordinated a regional HIV/AIDS Commodity Security Workshop to share and apply lessons learned from USAID’s ten-year Latin American contraceptive security work and from specific health workforce and supply chain work already done in the region. Additionally, workshops focusing on supply chain workforce motivation and quality of services were held in the Dominican Republic and El Salvador. Building on the action plans developed at its workshop, El Salvador sought to delve more deeply into ways to systematically improve the quality of services through supportive supervision. This technical report reviews the actions taken and lessons learned in strengthening and professionalizing the supply chain workforce.

Strengthening the Supply Chain Management Workforce in Namibia: Applying the WISN Method to Estimate Staffing Needs

People that Deliver is a global initiative that aims to address human resources inefficiencies in the public health supply chain. With the challenges faced in Namibia, the Ministry of Health and Social Services requested that People that Deliver pilot, with support from CapacityPlus, an integrated set of interventions to strengthen the supply chain management workforce. One of these interventions was to estimate the types and numbers of supply chain workers needed at central and regional medical stores based on the estimated workload. The World Health Organization’s Workload Indicators of Staffing Needs (WISN) tool was used to estimate the required number of pharmacists, pharmacist assistants, and clerks required at the national and regional levels of the supply chain. The findings, which indicated shortages in all three cadres of supply chain personnel, are presented in this report.

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.

“Everything Changed”: An HR Manager’s Path to Strengthening the Health System

CapacityPlus Voices #14

Effective management of a country’s health workforce is a vital component of a strong health system. Too often, though, human resources management is a weak link in the chain. To support the Dominican Republic Ministry of Health, CapacityPlus conducted a three-part program in leadership and management for central and regional HR managers. Participant Diana Santana shares her dramatic transformation. Read more »

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.