Knowledge Library

Discrete Choice Experiment User Guide

Understanding why health workers want or don’t want to take posts and remain in remote and rural areas is a prerequisite to formulating appropriate policy responses to the shortage of health workers in these areas. Building on the World Health Organization (WHO) Guidelines on Increasing Access to Health Workers in Remote and Rural Areas through Improved Retention, this user guide proposes an innovative methodology, the discrete choice experiment (DCE), to measure the strength of health workers’ preferences and trade-offs related to different job characteristics that can influence their decision to take up rural postings. The user guide offers step-by-step advice on the application of DCE to identify policy interventions appropriate to a particular country context. The guide is the product of close collaboration among three agencies—the World Bank, the WHO, and USAID/CapacityPlus—and represents their shared commitment to supporting policy-relevant research on critical topics related to human resources for health.

Many developing countries are making significant investments to increase the number of health workers available to provide care to growing populations. However, the available funding is far short of what is required. For these countries to train and produce a health workforce sufficient to meet the populations’ needs, new sources of funding for health worker education need to be found. To address this problem, CapacityPlus partnered with the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank, and the Global Health Workforce Alliance in an exploration of innovative financing of health worker education. This technical brief presents a summary of the forms of financing proposed or documented through this process.

iHRIS Retain Overview

An overview of iHRIS Retain, a user-friendly tool to cost retention strategies to be implemented at the district, regional, or national level.