A Global Gathering on Research and Tools for Health Systems Strengthening

CapacityPlus played an active role in the First Global Symposium on Health Systems Research, held on November 16-19 in Montreux, Switzerland. Maurice Middleberg, CapacityPlus director and IntraHealth International vice president for global policy, joined 1,200 participants from 100 countries to review current research on health systems and discuss strategies for strengthening the field.

A poster by CapacityPlus's Dykki Settle and the World Health Organization's Neeru Gupta on “Mapping country health worker classifications to ISCO standards to inform research, planning, and policy” was presented. At a preconference meeting of the Health Workforce Information Reference Group, Middleberg represented CapacityPlus's work in HR information systems strengthening.

Following the symposium, Middleberg and CapacityPlus consultant Peter Rockers attended an expert group meeting sponsored by the WHO, World Bank, and CapacityPlus on “Tools for implementing rural retention strategies: Towards a DCE ‘how to’ guide.” Middleberg and Rockers presented CapacityPlus’s rapid retention survey tool based on the discrete choice experiment (DCE) methodology. The group discussed the development of a toolkit to help policy-makers select interventions aimed at keeping health workers in remote facilities where they are urgently needed.

The Montreux Statement summarizes the First Global Symposium’s resulting agenda for action. A Second Global Symposium on Health Systems Research may take place in China in 2012 or 2013.

Photo by Trevor Snapp. (Health workers in Guatemala)