Documents & Reports

WHO Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel

The objectives of this code are to: establish and promote voluntary principles and practices for the ethical international recruitment of health personnel; serve as a reference in establishing or improving the legal and institutional framework; provide guidance in the formulation and implementation international legal instruments; and facilitate and promote international discussion and advance cooperation on matters related to the ethical international recruitment of health personnel. [adapted from author]

Mid-Level Health Providers: A Promising Resource to Achieve the Health Millennium Development Goals

A recent online discussion aimed to share evidence and good practice examples of the impact of mid-level providers and offer policy-relevant reflections. This report has been developed based on statements provided by the expert advisers and contributions made by participants as part of the discussion, complemented by a selective literature review. [from foreword]

Audit and Feedback: Effects on Professional Practice and Health Care Outcomes (Review)

This review aimed to assess the effects of audit and feedback on the practice of healthcare professionals and patient outcomes. [from abstract]

Transformative Scale Up of Health Professional Education: An Effort to Increase the Numbers of Health Professionals and to Strengthen Their Impact on Population Health

This information brochure provides a background and overview of the World Health Organization’s effort to provide guidance on the transformative scale up of health professional education to increase the quantity, quality and relevance of health professionals to strengthen their impact on population health. [from publisher]

Systems Support for Task-Shifting to Community Health Workers

Much of current discussion of task shifting focuses on community health workers who are seen as relieving doctors, clinical officers, and especially nurses of some of the health promotion and direct care and support work that professional cadres are frequently unable to deliver because of personnel shortages and distance from communities they service. However, task-shifting cannot work unless close attention is paid both to the systems that support successful implementation and to needed expansion of human resources within overall health care system. [adapted from author]

One Million Community Health Workers: Technical Task Force Report

This technical taskforce report focuses on providing broad cost guidance, deployment strategy and operational design considerations for community health worker subsystems as part of health system strengthening to achieve the Millenium Development Goals. [from author]

Human Resources for Health in Maternal, Neonatal and Reproductive Health at Community Level: a Profile of Fiji

This profile summarises the available information on the cadres working at community level in Fiji – their diversity, distribution, supervisory structures, education and training, as well as the policy and regulations that govern their practice. [from summary]

State of the World's Midwifery 2011: Delivering Health, Saving Lives

The report presents a body of knowledge to inform and accelerate the availability of quality midwifery services for women and newborns. It aims to make a valuable contribution both to strengthening the midwifery workforce around the world and to the critical planning that is needed to achieve the health Millennium Development Goals. [from summary]

Ethiopia's Rural Care Crisis Eased by Community Health Workers

This article and the accompanying video tell the story of a community health worker, Almaz Doiso, in Ethiopia who is responsible for the health needs of more than 500 families in one of the most remote regions of the world - South Omo Ethiopia. [adapted from author]

Hybrid Approach to Efficiency Measurement with Empirical Illustrations from Education and Health

This paper proposes a new approach to measure inefficiency and use it in benchmarking exercises to improve provider performance. [adapted from abstract]

Save Lives: Invest in Midwives

This brief outlines the essential role that midwives play in healthcare and the issues behind the shortage of midwives. [adapted from author]

Violence in Healthcare Facilities

This study examined ways to reduce the potential for violent occurrences in healthcare settings and minimize the impact of any violent situation that may arise. [adapted from author]

Improving Performance of Healthcare Providers Through Structured On-the-Job Training: A Pilot Test in Zimbabwe and Kenya

This pilot-test evaluation looked at feasibility as well as acceptability of structured on the job training as an intervention to improve the performance of providers. [from author]

Chances for Change: Dutch Measures to Improve the Global Distribution of Health Personnel

This publication presents measures composed by the Dutch Alliance for Human Resources for Health, a group concerned about the global maldistribution of human resources for health, to be taken by Dutch actors to improve the distribution of health staff across countries. [from preface]

Review of Health Leadership and Management Capacity in Cambodia

This review describes the current situation of health leadership and management capacity in Cambodia after its efforts to rebuild its health system following years of conflict that decimated the country’s health infrastructure. [from summary]

Task Shifting to Optimise the Roles of Health Workers to Improve the Delivery of Maternal and Child Healthcare

This report summarizes the best available evidence regarding the design and implementation of policies for extending the use of non-medically trained primary health care workers (task shifting) to deliver cost-effective maternal and child health interventions. [from preface]

New Insights into the Provision of Health Services in Indonesia: A Health Workforce Study

This study seeks to contribute to the government of Indonesia’s broader health system assessment by answering key health workforce questions. It examines changes in the supply and quality of health service providers and practitioners and links those changes with past and ongoing reforms. [from author]

Thailand’s Health Workforce: a Review of Challenges and Experiences

This paper provides an overview of the Thai health workforce situation and challenges, policy initiatives and programs aimed at addressing health workforce challenges, and a discussion of future challenges and key information and evidence gaps. [adapted from preface]

Human Resources for Health Implications of Scaling Up For Universal Access to HIV/AIDS Prevention, Treatment, and Care: Cote d’Ivoire Rapid Situational Analysis

This report presents the findings and key messages of rapid situation analysis in Cote d’Ivoire of the human resources for health implications for scaling up to universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care, and support. [from summary]

Human Resources for Health Implications of Scaling Up For Universal Access to HIV/AIDS Prevention, Treatment, and Care: Ethiopia Rapid Situational Analysis

This report presents the findings and key messages of rapid situation analysis in Ethiopia of the human resources for health implications for scaling up to universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care, and support. [from summary]

Human Resources for Health Implications of Scaling Up For Universal Access to HIV/AIDS Prevention, Treatment, and Care: Mozambique Rapid Situational Analysis

This report presents the findings and key messages of rapid situation analysis in Mozambique of the human resources for health implications for scaling up to universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care, and support. [from summary]

Role of Traditional Healers in Comprehensive HIV/AIDS Prevention and Care in Africa: Untapped Opportunities

This document discusses some of the strategies that have been successful in integrating African traditional medicine (TM) with biomedical medicine and points the way forward for establishing and expanding collaboration with African TM practitioners as part of a broader and more efficient approach to community-based HIV prevention and care. [from author]

Use of Midwives and Traditional Birth Attendants in HIV Care

The authors provide an overview of maternal health services in the context of the HIV pandemic and outline the role of health professionals in maternal health and HIV prevention, care, and treatment. Particular attention is paid to the potential role of traditional birth attendants in expanding access to quality care. [adapted from author]

Expanding the Role of Nurses in TB Prevention, Care, and Treatment

The aim of this document is to set out the issues, challenges, and strategies for scaling up the contribution of nursing to tuberculosis (TB) prevention, detection, care, and treatment. It argues that scaling up nursing roles in TB prevention, detection, care, and treatment, as well as involvement in key policy and decision making, is the cornerstone of effective national TB programs. [from author]

Developing National Training Materials for Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV: The Zimbabwe Experience

This chapter describes Zimbabwe’s experiences in developing national prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV in-service and preservice training materials for facility and community-based health workers. It also discusses the specific challenges associated with training materials development in the context of the Zimbabwean national health system. [from author]

Training and Clinical Mentorship to Support the Scale-Up of Pediatric HIV Care: Lessons Learned from Uganda

The principles and practices outlined in this document are based on the author’s experience with creating a health worker clinical mentorship program for pediatric HIV care in Uganda as part of the continuum of education required to create competent health-care providers. [adapted from author]

Development and Implementation of Training Packages for PMTCT and Pediatric HIV Care

This document discusses strategies and experiences in developing training materials and approaches for the implementation of health worker training programs for prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV (PMTCT) and pediatric HIV care.

Supporting National ART Scale-Up in Botswana through Standardized, Multiphased Training

The need to strengthen health-care worker capacity was identified by the Botswana Ministry of Health and confirmed by a training needs assessment conducted in 2001. In response, Botswana embarked on the first phase of a national antiretroviral training program, which this document outlines. [adapted from author]

Curriculum Development and Training for Comprehensive HIV Care

Building capacity within the health systems of communities that face the task of scaling up HIV therapy in settings of high disease prevalence and/or limited resources is a tremendous challenge. This document will discuss the development of training programs for health-care personnel to meet this challenge. [from author]

Popular Training Methodologies and Applications

This document reviews challenges and approaches to popular methodologies and applications of clinical HIV training in order to address the question of what is the optimal approach to training the health workforce for an expanding HIV-treatment program in a resource-limited setting. [adapted from author]