Planning

This paper reviews the situation and trend in human resources for health and its priority problems in Thailand. It also highlights the issue of the inequitable distribution of doctors. Through several brainstorming sessions among stakeholders, it summarizes a package of recommendations for the future continuous and sustainable knowledge-based human resources for health development. [from abstract]

The purpose of this toolkit is to assist health professionals, health professional associations, and civil society organizations to develop advocacy strategies to address human resource and health financing issues in their countries. [from introduction]

The challenges in the health workforce are well known and clearly documented. What is not so clearly understood is how to address these issues in a comprehensive and integrated manner that will lead to solutions. This editorial presents - and invites comments on - a technical framework intended to raise awareness among donors and multisector organizations outside ministries of health and to guide planning and strategy development at the country level. [abstract]

The purpose of this document is to provide Africa 2010’s strategy for strengthening regional and local capacity for adopting effective policies and innovations to improve the health status of Africans. [from introduction]

This paper proposes a methodological approach to estimating the requirements of human resources to achieve the goals set forth by the Millennium Declaration. The method builds on the service-target approach and functional job analysis. [adapted from abstract]

Australia is experiencing workforce shortages across a number of health professions despite a significant and growing reliance on overseas trained health workers. The shortages are even more acute in rural and remote areas. It is critical to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the available health workforce, and to improve its distribution. This report describes the Australian government’s objectives of developing a more sustainable and responsive health workforce while maintaining a commitment to high quality and safe health outcomes. A set of national workforce objectives are also proposed.

This book contains a series of case studies which depict the management issues a family planning organization faces in designing and implementing a new community-based distribution (CBD) program for contraceptives. The cases, which take place in a fictional country Momonboro, are based on an actual program initiated in an African country, and reflect the problems and successes which that program experienced. The book is divided into seven sections: an overview of CBD, planning, effective management, supervision, compensation and pricing, financial control, and a start-up kit that serves as a guide through the major tasks of planning and implementing a CBD project.

This practice note provides UNDP staff and other development practitioners with a basic understanding of the capacities to focus on in a development context, why such capacities are important, how capacity develops and how external partners can support efforts of countries to develop and utilise their capacities to support development goals. [publisher’s description]

In this policy brief, we review approaches to capacity planning, a crucial component of health care governance. By concentrating on a diverse selection of countries, we aim to show a range of approaches to health care financing and organization, since both of these factors have an impact on approaches to capacity planning. [adapted from introduction]

This issue of Health Action looks at a few of the many [health] challenges, their likely impact on health workers and how they might be met. What may surprise some readers is that many challenges do not involve medical advances. Rather, they are concerned with adapting health systems to cope with new developments (for example, demographic changes, non-communicable diseases) and finding new ways of working effectively. [author’s description]

The issue contains articles on: supporting staff strengths; building better partnerships; and partners in planning.

This paper looks at the successes and failures of today’s health care workforce. Hargadon and Plsek argue that our current solutions to the problems in the health workforce are insufficient. To overcome these insufficiencies, they believe that we need to better understand the complexities of the workforce. However, this is not an easy feat, because these problems challenge our traditional mental models of how things should work. [abstract]

This issue of The Family Planning Manager will help you to asses both the opportunities and the risks inherent in decentralizing your program. It will help you identify the new relationships that must exist between the central and local level managers, and the types of skills that local level managers must have in order for decentralization to have a positive impact. [author’s description]

This paper is mainly intended to show the demographic implications for Bangladesh’s Health-human resources production in the next two decades as absolute increase in Population is still too high that the economy can cope with. [author’s description]

An annual review done against the priorities set in the South Africa Health Sector Strategic Framework, 1999 to 2004, and in the Strategic Plan of the National Department for 2003/04 to 2005/06. Section 2 is devoted to Human Resource Management Data.

This paper provides practical guidelines for managers and health professionals looking to skill mix as a potential solution to health service delivery problems. These guidelines emphasise the need to evaluate the problem, and examine the context, before deciding if skill mix is the answer. The guidelines are provided in the knowledge that skill mix is rarely examined in a pure theoretical sense by organisations. They have to adopt a pragmatic approach which takes account of the day-to-day realities of their priorities and resources. [abstract]

This document summarizes the human resources management situation in the region, its determinants, and the projects for its development. To promote improvements in the human resources management function as part of the sectoral changes under way at the national and regional level, the Pan American Health Organization is proposing a series of strategies, actions, and operational tools through the Observatory of Human Resources in Health Sector Reform initiative. [adapted from author]

This publication is an effort to respond to the different needs for capacity building in management and implementation of health programmes and delivery of essential services. It reflects the thinking acquired from experience working with health sector reforms being implemented in the African Region. The District Health Management Training modules cover the principles that are applicable across the Region and are meant to guide and strengthen the management capacity of district health management teams. [author’s description]


Module 1: Health Sector Reform and District Health Systems; Module 2: Management, Leadership and Partnership for District Health; Module 3: Management of Health Resources; Module 4: Planning and Implementation of District Health Services.

This presentation was part of the ECSA Workforce Observatory Meeting in Arusha. It discusses health labor force dynamics including how traditional workforce planning does not consider key issues, incentive issues and mapping workfoce productivity in Ghana.


To view this presentation, you must have either Microsoft PowerPoint or download the free PowerPoint Viewer.

This review highlighted the fact that employment equity debates and policies largely refer to high-income countries. Even in these countries, there is more rhetorical commitment than hard evidence of successful outcomes. Evaluations have been mainly post hoc and many initiatives have not been evaluated at all. There is a continuing debate about what is the appropriate kind of intervention, a number of competing models being advocated. The most noticeable trend seems to be away from reliance on targeting by numbers (particularly for recruitment) and towards more comprehensive approaches across a range of inter- and intra-organizational interventions and over the whole career of the employee.

This background paper attempts to address the basic concept of national HRH observatories including what can they do, how to mobilize and establish them, types of activities, organization and coordintation, finance and examples of outcomes. [adapted from author]

The main aim of the study was to estimate how much clinician-time that malaria exacts on Malawi’s Ministry of Health resources. It estimates the proportion of finances that anti-malarial medications exact on the country’s health budget and determines whether the Malawi public health sector had adequate human resources to provide treatment. [adapted from author]

Using the training needs projection methods in the Spectrum Policy Modeling System software module ProTrain

The Family Planning Manager’s Handbook is a standard text in management training courses around the world and has received wide recognition as a practical guide for managers of health and family planning programs. [publisher’s description]

This document report on the trends of HRH during past fifty years including the issues of unqualified doctors in rural areas, geographical differences in HRH, and the increase in medical school graduates. It also forecasts HRH needs for fifteen years from 2000 to 2015.

This guide is designed for managers, supervisors, educators, planners, and evaluators. Its purpose is to discuss ways to improve decisions that affect how human resources are used to provide health services. Improved decisions require up-to-date and detailed information about three components of human resources for health: (1) the workforce, (2) the work performed and (3) the work settings. This guide discusses how to establish an information system that links these three components to form a unified model of human resources planning, training, and utilization. [from overview]

Most human resources for health in developing countries are produced by highly subsidized public institutes. Due to inequity in basic education most health science students are from wealthier urban families. They tend to remain in urban areas after graduation, creating inequitable distribution of health personnel. At the same time the public education institutes are subject to strong bureaucratic inefficiency and usually no systematic quality control system. This paper analyses this situation in Thailand. [adapted from abstract]

Tools to assist primary providers and their managers in assessing, monitoring and improving the gender sensitivity of family planning and reproductive health services on an ongoing basis. [publisher’s description]

This article takes up the relatively neglected issue of gender in human resources policy and planning (HRPP), with particular reference to the health sector in developing countries.

GRHAM is a CCIH initiative, in collaboration with numerous partners, to increase the awareness of Faith-based Organizations (FBOs) in providing essential health services around the world. GRHAM strives to put FBOs and Christian Health Associations (CHAs) “on the map” to improve networking, including collaboration with and between christian health associations, medical missions, ministries of health and multilateral donors. [from website description]

Against the backdrop of growing concern about shortages of health personnel, the report focuses on one of the most critical components of the workforce – nurses. Nurses are the “front line” staff in most health systems, and their contribution is recognised as essential to meeting these development goals and delivering safe and effective care. In presenting a global overview, the paper reports on key trends, main challenges and potential solutions. The emphasis is on breadth of coverage, but specific nursing workforce issues in different countries are highlighted to illustrate the main challenges facing those responsible for developing and implementing policies on the nursing workforce. The report presents a snapshot of a dynamic and challenging situation worldwide. [from executive summary]