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Impact and Sustainability of an Accredited Paediatric Nursing Training Programme in Ghana

In this qualitative descriptive study, we explored the perceived impact and sustainability of the first accredited
Paediatric Nursing Training Programme (PNTP) in Ghana, established in 2010 by a north-south Ghanaian-Canadian
partnership to address child health care access and quality issues in the country. [from abstract]

Engaging Frontline Health Providers in Improving the Quality of Health Care Using Facility-Based Improvement Collaboratives in Afghanistan: Case Study

Quality of care can be significantly improved by engaging teams of frontline workers to identify problems and find local solutions for those problems. Based on the results achieved in Kunduz, Balkh, and Kabul, the collaborative improvement work was expanded from 2010–2012 to seven more provinces. The results achieved on the ground also led the MoPH to establish a unit for quality and a national health care quality improvement strategy for Afghanistan. [from abstract]

A South African Public-Private Partnership HIV Treatment Model: Viability and Success Factors

The increasing number of people requiring HIV treatment in South Africa calls for efficient use of its human
resources for health in order to ensure optimum treatment coverage and outcomes. This paper describes an innovative
public-private partnership model which uses private sector doctors to treat public sector patients and ascertains the
model’s ability to maintain treatment outcomes over time. [from abstract]

The Service Delivery Underperformance Index: A Multidimensional Approach to Measuring the Inadequacies in Service Delivery

A new approach to the measurement of service delivery is introduced. The Service Delivery Underperformance Index (SDUI)
adapts the Alkire and Foster (2011) methodology used for poverty measurement to measure the underperformance, or multiple inadequacies, in service delivery. [from abstract]

Assessment of Prevalence and Determinants’ of Occupational Exposure to HIV Infection Among Health Care Workers in Selected Health Institutions in Debre Birhan Town, North Shoa Zone, Amhara Region, Ethiopia, 2014

Health care workers are exposed to different kinds of occupational hazards due to their day to day activities. The most common occupational exposure like body fluids are a potential risk of transmission of blood born infection like human immunodeficiency virus. [from abstract]

The Production, Distribution, and Performance of Physicians, Nurses, and Midwives in Indonesia: An Update

Indonesia launched the national health insurance program - Jaminan Kesehatan National (JKN) - on January 1, 2014, and aims to achieve universal health coverage (UHC) by 2019. Achieving UHC means not only increasing the number of people covered but also expanding the benefits package and ensuring financial protection. Although the JKN benefits package is comprehensive, a key challenge related to the capacity to deliver the promised services is ensuring the availability, distribution, and quality of human resources for health (HRH). [from abstract]

Evidence and Prospects of Shortage and Mobility of Medical Doctors: A Literature Survey

This paper focuses on the shortage in health workforce, its causes and its consequences.[from introduction]

“Volunteers Are Not Paid Because They Are Priceless”: Community Health Worker Capacities and Values in an AIDS Treatment Intervention in Urban Ethiopia

This article analyzes community health workers’ (CHW) capacities for empathic service within an AIDS treatment program in Addis Ababa. I show how CHWs’ capacities to build relationships with stigmatized people, reconcile family disputes, and confront death draw on a constellation of values, desires, and emotions encouraged by CHWs’ families and religious teachings. I then examine the ways in which the capacities of CHWs were valued by the
institutions that deployed them.

How Do Health Extension Workers in Ethiopia Allocate Their Time?

In 2003, the Government of Ethiopia launched the Health Extension Programme and introduced a new cadre, health extension workers (HEWs), to improve access to care in rural communities. In 2013, to inform the government’s plans for HEWs to take on an enhanced role in community-based newborn care, a time and motion study was conducted to understand the range of HEW responsibilities and how they allocate their time across health and non-health activities. [from abstract]

A Scenario-Planning Approach to Human Resources for Health: The Case of Community Pharmacists in Portugal

This study aims to design three future scenarios for Portuguese community pharmacists, recognizing the changing environment as an opportunity to develop the role that community pharmacists may play in the Portuguese health system. [from abstract]

Nursing Education: The Past, Present and Future

The purpose of the paper is provide a brief review of the evolution of nursing education in the United States and globally, describe the current and projected state of nursing education, and discuss some pressing challenges educators face as they strive to meet the charge to prepare nurses to care for more complex patients situated in ever-changing health-care systems. [from abstract]

Universal Health Coverage for Inclusive and Sustainable Development: Lessons from Japan

This report brings together 10 in-depth studies on different aspects of Japan’s UHC [Universal Healthcare Coverage] experience, using a common framework for analysis focused on the political economy of UHC reform, and the policies and strategies for addressing challenges in health financing and human resources for health. Japan’s commitment to UHC played a key role in the country’s economic recovery after World War second, and helped ensure that the benefits of economic growth were shared equitably across the population. [from abstract]

Progress, Challenges and Opportunities for HIV Prevention and Control Among High Risk Groups: A Public Health Perspective

There are various socio-cultural issues/obstacles in prevention of HIV-AIDS in high risk group for e.g., gender inequality, power inequalities and male dominance; condom use believed to be in conflict with the cultural importance for procreation; poverty, illiteracy, increase in migrant population and unemployment; poor knowledge and awareness of reproductive and sexual health and sexuality; emergence of new urban sub-culture and physical or mental abuse at a young age.

Public Health in the Age of Ebola in West Africa

The world is witnessing the unprecedented unfolding of the West African Ebola epidemic. The epidemic could have major ramifications for global public health in ways that no other modern infectious disease has, perhaps including AIDS, and can be viewed as a “Black Swan” event. What we call here a Black Swan (and capitalize it) is an event with the following three attributes. First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expecta- tions, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility.

Community Participation in Formulating the Post-2015 Health and Development Goal Agenda: Reflections of a Multi-Country Research Collaboration

While the Millennium Development Goals focused on redressing extreme poverty and its antecedents for people living in developing countries, the post-2015 agenda seeks to redress inequity worldwide, regardless of a country’s development status. Furthermore, to rectify the UN’s top-down approach toward the Millennium Development Goals’ formulation, widespread negotiations are underway that seek to include the voices of people and communities from around the globe to ground each post-2015 development goal.

Making the Post-MDG Global Health Goals Relevant for Highly Inequitable Societies: Findings From A Consultation with Marginalized Populations in Guatemala

Achieving health goals in a context of deep-rooted inequality and marginalization requires going beyond the simple expansion of health services and working with developing trusting relationships between health service providers and community members. Involving community members in decision-making processes that shape policies will contribute to a
larger process of community empowerment and democratization. [from abstract]

A New Methodology for Assessing Health Policy and Systems Research and Analysis Capacity in African Universities

The importance of health policy and systems research and analysis (HPSR?+?A) has been increasingly recognised, but it is still unclear how most effectively to strengthen the capacity of the different organisations involved in this field. Universities are particularly crucial but the expansive literature on capacity development has little to offer the unique needs of HPSR?+?A activity within universities, and often overlooks the pivotal contribution of capacity assessments to capacity strengthening. [from abstract]

Does Involvement of Local NGOs Enhance Public Service Delivery?: Cautionary Evidence From A Malaria-Prevention Evaluation in India

The study observed the impact of an experimental supportive intervention to India’s malaria control program by location on the individual level. There are various possible reasons that account for the observed divergence across districts. [from abstract]

Health Financing in the Republic of Gabon

This is a review of the health financing situation in the Republic of Gabon. The book reviews the situation in the country under the lens of the principles of health financing: revenue mobilization for health, risk pooling, and purchasing services. [from abstract]

Universal Health Coverage for Inclusive and Sustainable Development: A Synthesis of 11 Country Case Studies

The goals of Universal Health Coverage (UHC) are to ensure that all people can access quality health services, to safeguard all people from public health risks, and to protect all people from impoverishment due to illness, whether from out-of-pocket payments for health care or loss of income when a household member falls sick. [from resource]

Strengthening Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) and Building Sustainable Health Information Systems in Resource Limited Countries: Lessons Learned from an M&E Task-Shifting Initiative in Botswana

To improve monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of health programs in Botswana, 51 recent university graduates with no experience in M&E were recruited and provided with on-the-job training and mentoring to develop a new cadre of health worker: the district M&E officer. Three years after establishment of the cadre, an assessment was conducted to document achievements and lessons learnt. [from abstract]

An Action Research Study: Introducing ICT's in Developing Countries

We explore the current status of this area in the research community. E-health gives us an introduction to why we are trying to introduce information and communication technology’s (ICT’s) in order to improve health care. [adapted from abstract]

Health Workforce Productivity: An Approach for Measurement, Analysis, and Improvement

Given the global health worker crisis, now more than ever there is a critical need to improve the productivity of the existing health workforce and maximize service delivery efficiencies to ensure quality family planning/reproductive health (FP/RH), HIV and AIDS, maternal and child health, and other health services as well as further progress towards universal health coverage. This course explores some basic concepts of health workforce productivity. [from resource]

Exploring the Nature of Governance At The Level of Implementation For Health System Strengthening: The DIALHS Experience

This article presents a South African case study of an intervention to address conflict in roles and responsibilities between multiple actors supporting service delivery at the local level, and explores the broader insights this experience generates about the nature of local health system governance. [from abstract]

Patient Satisfaction with Task Shifting of Antiretroviral Services in Ethiopia: Implications for Universal Health Coverage

Formalized task shifting structures have been used to rapidly scale up antiretroviral service delivery to underserved populations in several countries, and may be a promising mechanism for accomplishing universal health coverage. However, studies evaluating the quality of service delivery through task shifting have largely ignored the patient perspective, focusing on health outcomes and acceptability to health care providers and regulatory bodies, despite studies worldwide that have shown the significance of patient satisfaction as an indicator of quality.

The Leaking Pocket: The Implicit Struggle for Skilled Health Workers Between Private Not-For-Profit and Public Sector in Tanzania

Public health services in sub-Sahara Africa countries face severe health workforce shortages exacerbated by both outward migration and internal public-to-private sector migration—Tanzania is no exception. This review was conducted to characterize the extent of health workforce shortages in Tanzania, and the factors impacting on the shortage. [from abstract]

Human Resource Management in Post-Conflict Health Systems: Review of Research and Knowledge gaps

In post-conflict settings, severe disruption to health systems invariably leaves populations at high risk of disease and
in greater need of health provision than more stable resource-poor countries. The health workforce is often a direct
victim of conflict. Effective human resource management (HRM) strategies and policies are critical to addressing the
systemic effects of conflict on the health workforce such as flight of human capital, mismatches between skills and
service needs, breakdown of pre-service training, and lack of human resource data.

A Community Health Worker “Logic Model”: Towards a Theory of Enhanced Performance in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

There has been a resurgence of interest in national Community Health Worker (CHW) programs in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). A lack of strong research evidence persists, however, about the most efficient and effective strategies to ensure optimal, sustained performance of CHWs at scale. To facilitate learning and research to address this knowledge gap, the authors developed a generic CHW logic model that proposes a theoretical causal pathway to improved performance. The logic model draws upon available research and expert knowledge on CHWs in LMICs.[from abstract]

Local Stakeholders’ Perceptions About the Introduction of Performance-Based Financing in Benin: A Case Study in Two Health Districts

Performance-Based Financing (PBF) has been advanced as a solution to contribute to improving the performance of health systems in developing countries. This is the case in Benin. This study aims to analyse how two PBF approaches, piloted in Benin, behave during implementation and what effects they produce, through investigating how local stakeholders perceive the introduction of PBF, how they adapt the different approaches during implementation, and the behavioural interactions induced by PBF. [from abstract]

Effective Strategies for Global Health Research, Training and Clinical Care: A Narrative Review

The purpose of this narrative review was to synthesize the evidence on effective strategies for global health research, training and clinical care in order to identify common structures that have been used to guide program development. [from abstract]