Building Powerful Constituencies to Address the Health Workforce Crisis: The Importance of Global Partnerships
To foster action on the global human resources for health (HRH) crisis, a sense of urgency must be sustained at global, regional, and national levels. Many organizations, governments, and agencies are engaged in promoting sound HRH policies and practices; however, no single entity can resolve health workforce challenges on its own. The goal of global leadership and partnership is to engage a diverse variety of stakeholders across multiple sectors to promote ongoing action to address the HRH crisis and support advancement toward universal health coverage.
CapacityPlus contributes expertise and coordination to a range of global partnerships and technical working groups that are propelling global, regional, and country-level HRH efforts. Through its participation in these groups, the project is advancing the evidence base and making it possible for others to make use of those advances. Here are a few recent accomplishments of these groups:
Africa Christian Health Associations Platform (ACHAP)
With support from CapacityPlus, ACHAP’s Human Resources for Health (HRH) Technical Working Group launched Because Health Workers Matter, a tool for faith-based organizations and health facility leaders to use to advocate for strengthening human resources management at the facility and national levels.
Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE) Global Expert Working Group
This group developed a user guide, published by the World Health Organization (WHO), on the application of the DCE methodology to identify appropriate policy interventions to tackle health workforce shortages in a country’s underserved areas. CapacityPlus collaborated with the World Bank and the WHO to produce the user guide, which provides step-by-step advice and case studies on the application of the DCE in country contexts. CapacityPlus contributed a case study on Uganda’s application of the DCE using CapacityPlus’s Rapid Retention Survey Toolkit and the iHRIS Retain costing software developed in collaboration with the WHO.
Third Global Forum on HRH Working Group
CapacityPlus is collaborating with the Global Health Workforce Alliance and other international organizations in the planning and development of the Third Global Forum on HRH to be held in Recife, Brazil in November 2013. The theme is human resources for health: foundation for universal health coverage and the post-2015 development agenda. The forum will provide an opportunity to explore health workforce issues from the perspective of how they influence the coverage of essential interventions and health services, and to identify what changes in health workforce investment, production, deployment, and retention are required to achieve universal health coverage.
Health Workforce Information Reference Group (HIRG)
Through collaboration with the WHO’s HIRG, CapacityPlus contributed to development of the WHO Country Assessment Tool on the Uses and Sources for Human Resources for Health (HRH) Data. This tool is based on CapacityPlus’s HRIS Strengthening Implementation Toolkit. It contains questions to help countries gather information on the uses, types, and quality of health worker data at the institutional level. Results can be used to identify country priorities and create strategies to strengthen HRIS at the district, regional, or national level. The current version of the instrument has been field tested in Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, Mozambique, and São Tomé and Príncipe. The WHO and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been using the tool in a pilot capacity over the last two years in Guatemala, Rwanda, and Nigeria to understand the support required to assist these countries to improve or develop their HRIS.
In-Service Training Implementation Framework Consultative Group
This USAID-funded working group has finalized a framework for in-service training (IST) designed to enable IST providers to identify best practices, improve sustainability of programs, and ensure effectiveness and efficiency in program delivery. CapacityPlus used the preliminary framework as the starting point for developing a protocol and tools for assessing the IST provided by PEPFAR implementing partners in Nigeria since 2007. The framework will be officially launched in late 2013.
Optimize4MNH
CapacityPlus served on the global panel of technical experts that contributed to the development of the WHO’s Recommendations for Optimizing Health Worker Roles for Maternal and Newborn Health Interventions through Task Shifting (Optimize4MNH). CapacityPlus participated in the evidence review process, helped formulate recommendations, and provided input on the development and dissemination of the global recommendations. The recommendations are intended for health policy-makers, managers, and other stakeholders at regional, national, and international levels, with the understanding that they will be adapted to fit the political and health systems contexts wherever they are implemented.
People that Deliver
People that Deliver is a global partnership whose mission is to build capacity to implement evidence-based approaches to plan, finance, develop, support, and retain the national workforces needed for the effective, efficient, and sustainable management of health supply chains. This broad coalition includes more than 80 organizations, including developing country governments, international donors, multilateral agencies, NGOs, academic institutions, professional associations, and private companies. CapacityPlus has provided critical HRH expertise to the board of directors and technical working groups of the initiative, led the development of a five-year strategic plan, and organized and hosted a satellite event at the XIX International AIDS Conference on developing sustainable excellence in the supply chain management workforce.
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