Second Global Forum on HRH

Linking Faith-Based Health Care with Ministries of Health

Wilma GormleyOver the past year and a half, CapacityPlus has supported faith-based organizations’ (FBOs) ability to manage their health workforces and provide high quality care to underserved populations. Recently, we held a side session as part of the Second Global Forum on Human Resources for Health to help strengthen linkages between the FBO community and ministries of health and provide strategies and tactics for how to bring about this increased integration.

With these objectives in mind, the group discussion centered on two key questions:

  • What should the FBO community do to promote the integration and linkages between them and national-level health workforce policies and practices?
  • What should workforce decision-makers and human resources professionals within ministries of health do to strengthen linkages with the FBO community?

Without the User, There Is No System: Harnessing Technology through the eHealth Workforce

Dykki SettleThis post was originally published on the IntraHealth International blog.

When we talk about building strong health systems and the health workers to run these systems, we often think about doctors or nurses or community health workers. Just as crucial to health systems are robust health information systems that help manage and make accessible information about patients, clinics, budgets, payroll, and all the other details that make a health care system work.

When it comes to building a strong electronic health (eHealth) information system, the user is, arguably, the most important part.

Still weak, but growing
An eHealth workforce requires system administrators, programmers, and analysts who sustain and extend a country’s health information systems and eHealth technologies. Many countries in the developing world have growing but weak information and communication systems, which makes building the eHealth infrastructure system an ongoing challenge. Read more »

Transforming a Thai Hospital through Pay for Performance

Paul MarsdenAboard a tour bus covered in enormous fuchsia flowers, we traveled through the Bangkok morning rush hour. This we knew: we were in for an eye-opening field trip as part of the Second Global Forum on Human Resources for Health.

Our destination that day was Chachoengsao Province—130 km (or 81 miles) from Bangkok— where we had the opportunity to see firsthand the transformation of the Phanom Sarakham Community Hospital and how it’s working toward establishing a pay for performance scheme.

Charismatic leadership
The hospital was previously considered one of the most run-down in Thailand, beset by persistently poor service quality and low staff morale. Read more »

Health Workforce Action after Bangkok

Maurice MiddlebergRecently a thousand people gathered in Bangkok for the Second Global Forum on Human Resources for Health. Since then many of us have been reflecting on where to focus our energies. Here’s what’s been on my mind.

Communicating about the crisis and its solutions
The forum opened with a wonderful video on health workers—the best piece in any medium I have ever seen in terms of communicating the essence of the health workforce crisis.

Effective communication about the issues—and how to resolve them—is vital to garnering the support we need to make real progress. To the extent possible, we should commit sufficient resources to this effort. Read more »

Retaining Health Workers in Rural Kenya: What We Can Learn from Other Countries

This is an excerpt from an original post on the IntraHealth International blog.

Achim ChiajiIn the northern arid lands and other remote parts of Kenya, the Capacity Kenya project has been working with the Ministry of Health to design simple packages to attract health workers and encourage them to stay. Starting with a selected list of diverse pilot sites, the project set out to design intervention packages, implement them, and systematically evaluate their impact on health worker retention over time.

A couple of weeks ago I attended the Second Global Forum on Human Resources for Health in Bangkok, which gave me a unique opportunity to learn about the struggles, successes, and constraints of other countries. As I listened to the experiences of others and what they see as best practices, I kept thinking about what new interventions might work best in the Kenyan context. Read more »

Local Solutions, Global Solidarity, and Accountability

This post was originally published on the IntraHealth International blog.

Meshack NdoloWhile the Second Global Forum on Human Resources for Health was full of opportunities, it was also quite deficient in addressing the one global issue that continues to hold back progress to achieving most of the health goals—the Millennium Development Goal 8: Global Partnership for Development. I do, however, remain optimistic.

In my country, Kenya, there is considerable awareness of the health workforce problem and there is momentum to act on many fronts. The Capacity Kenya project has worked closely with the Ministry of Health and others to develop a national Human Resources for Health Strategic Plan, which established national priorities for addressing Kenya’s workforce constraints. Read more »

What Brought Us Here Won’t Get Us There: Implementing Country-Level Health Workforce Development Plans

CapacityPlus works with the Uganda Ministry of Health to enhance workforce performance support, including field testing the project’s global rapid discrete choice experiment (DCE) tool to address attraction and retention of health worker cadres in rural and remote areas and a retention costing tool, iHRIS Retain. This post was originally published on the IntraHealth International blog.

Three years ago, we met in Kampala, Uganda to discuss the critical needs of the global health workforce. Last week in Bangkok we gathered to take stock of what we’ve accomplished since.

Today, 86% of the 51 countries surveyed in the progress report on implementing the Kampala Declaration and Agenda for Global Action have a national human resources for health plan, but only 41% are actually implementing that plan. Read more »

Removing the Blindfold: Mapping Health Worker Schools to Improve Education

Shaun NoronhaThe transformative scale-up of health worker education can be like the game of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. We know so little about health worker education that it often feels like we’re playing blindfolded.

Recognizing that we can’t really transform health worker education until we know where health schools are located, the World Health Organization organized a panel at the Second Global Forum on Human Resources for Health in Bangkok to discuss global mapping of health worker educational institutions.

I was invited to speak about the mapping of nursing schools. Read more »

Conventional and Thai Traditional Medicine: Visiting Uthong Hospital

At Uthong Hospital—a 150-bed community facility in Amphur-Uthong, Supanburi Province, Thailand—I had the opportunity to learn how the staff integrate both conventional medicine and Thai traditional therapies. Located about two hours away from Bangkok, the field trip was part of the busy week-long events at the Second Global Forum on Human Resources for Health. Read more »

Exploring the Siriraj Hospital at the Second Global Forum on HRH

Shaun NoronhaDespite the 6:30 a.m. reporting time, the field trip to Siriraj Hospital in Bangkok—part of the Second Global Forum on Human Resources for Health—turned out to be one of the best events of the week.

Siriraj Hospital, part of Mahidol University, is the oldest and largest hospital in Thailand. We were told that the attached medical school produces about a quarter of all Thai medical graduates.

Besides its numerical strength, the school also pays great attention to a number of issues relevant to the transformative scale-up of health worker education. Read more »

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