Health Workers

Gender Discrimination and Health Workforce Development: An Advocacy Tool

david — Thu, 03 Sep 2015 17:26:43 +0000

Author's name:

CapacityPlus

September 2015 (All day)

Gender Discrimination and Health Workforce Development: An Advocacy Tool

Health professional education systems play a pivotal role in developing competent, motivated health workers who are vital to the delivery of high-quality family planning, maternal and child health, HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, and other essential health services. This online tool outlines recommended combinations of gender transformative interventions to counter various forms of gender discrimination in learning environments, and provides advocacy strategies for stakeholders to develop plans to create, implement, and enforce conducive environments, equal opportunity, and nondiscrimination policies. The tool draws from a technical report and technical brief published by CapacityPlus on strengthening the health worker pipeline through gender transformative strategies.

Strengthening School Management: A Guide for Optimizing the Use of Health Workforce Education Resources

Carol Bales — Mon, 03 Aug 2015 11:02:47 +0000

Author's name:

Rebecca Bailey, Richard Seifman, Heather Ross, and Kate Tulenko

July 2015 (All day)

A Guide for Optimizing the Use of Health Workforce Education Resources

Education and training institutions around the globe are struggling to meet the increasing demand for more high-quality health workers. A more business-like approach to operating and managing these institutions would allow schools to produce greater numbers of competent and qualified graduates within budget. This guide includes self-assessment against predefined management standards or good practices, followed by prioritization, goal-setting, planning, implementation, and monitoring of progress. The guide.also provides useful tools to support each step. Learn more about the guide and access tools.

The HRH Effort Index: New Indicators to Help Systems Strengthening

Sarah Dwyer — Tue, 19 May 2015 15:40:41 +0000

Author's name:

Alfredo Fort, Rachel Deussom, Randi Burlew, and Kate Gilroy

March 2015 (All day)

The HRH Effort Index: New Indicators to Help Systems Strengthening

CapacityPlus’s Human Resources for Health (HRH) Effort Index is a tool to obtain HRH indicators contributing to health systems strengthening. Shared at the Global Health Mini-University in Washington, DC, on March 2, 2015, this presentation gives an overview of the tool and findings from pilot testing in Kenya and Nigeria.

Health Workforce Education: Investing in the Next Generation of Health Workers

Sarah Dwyer — Mon, 20 Apr 2015 12:29:31 +0000

Author's name:

CapacityPlus and SHOPS

April 2015 (All day)

Webinar presentation

Webinar recording

On April 14, 2015, CapacityPlus and SHOPS presented a webinar on innovative investment options for health workforce education and training. Over 40 participants joined in the session, which offered presentations and question-and-answer sessions with participants engaging both the speakers and each other. Access a recording of the webinar and view presentation slides.

mHealth Compendium Volume Four

Carol Bales — Wed, 08 Apr 2015 16:54:39 +0000

Author's name:

African Strategies for Health

October 2014 (All day)

mHealth Compendium Volume Four

The fourth edition of the mHealth compendium is a collection of 31 case studies, including one focused on application of CapacityPlus’s interactive voice response (IVR) mLearning platform to deliver refresher training to family planning providers in Senegal (page 68). The compendium also highlights the nine Principles for Digital Development, provides evidence for mHealth interventions, and identifies valuable databases, training materials, guidelines, and toolkits for mHealth project implementers.

Promoting Gender Equality in the Health Workforce: An Advocacy Tool

Sarah Dwyer — Wed, 01 Apr 2015 14:20:41 +0000

Author's name:

CapacityPlus

April 2015 (All day)

Promoting Gender Equality in the Health Workforce

Health workforce leaders may not be aware of the ways in which gender discrimination impedes efforts to develop, efficiently deploy, and fairly compensate their workforce. This can result in maldistribution, absenteeism, and a limited pool of motivated health workers, which can negatively impact the provision of health care. This advocacy tool helps users to understand how common forms of gender inequalities and discrimination can negatively affect the health workforce; assess whether health workers may be experiencing one or more forms of discrimination; and successfully advocate and take action through policy-making and improved management to reduce gender discrimination and build a more motivated and effective workforce to serve the population’s family planning, reproductive health, HIV/AIDS, and other primary health care needs.

MEPI Connect—An Open Source Graduate Tracking Software System: Resource Requirements to Customize and Implement the System

Sarah Dwyer — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 21:00:22 +0000

Author's name:

Michael Drane, Rebecca Bailey, Rachel Deussom, and Zohray Talib

January 2015 (All day)

MEPI Connect: Resource Requirements

MEPI Connect is a software system that supports medical schools to track and engage with their graduates. The system allows users to view and analyze graduates’ demographic and professional information. The information is obtained initially from the school registrar’s office, then from the graduates themselves, and, when possible, from human resources information systems at ministries of health and/or professional councils. The software was developed by the PEPFAR-funded Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) Physician Tracking Technical Working Group in collaboration with CapacityPlus and the MEPI Coordinating Center. This document describes resource requirements to customize and implement the system.

Health Workforce Productivity Analysis and Improvement Toolkit

Sarah Dwyer — Wed, 18 Feb 2015 19:37:43 +0000

Author's name:

CapacityPlus

February 2015 (All day)

Health Workforce Productivity Analysis and Improvement Toolkit

The health workforce is critical for ensuring access to high-quality family planning/reproductive health, maternal and child health, HIV/AIDS, and other services in order to improve health outcomes. While increasing the number of health workers where there are shortages is essential, it is equally important to improve the productivity of the existing workforce and make service delivery more efficient. The Health Workforce Productivity Analysis and Improvement Toolkit describes a step-wise process to measure the productivity of facility-based health workers, understand the underlying causes of productivity problems, and identify potential interventions to address them. Users can enter and save facility-level data on service delivery outputs and human resources costs in order to calculate total health workforce productivity and compare these rates across facilities. This process differentiates higher-productivity facilities from lower-productivity ones, which through a qualitative assessment can help managers and supervisors to consider which factors are affecting health workforce productivity in the facilities.

Investing in Health Workforce Education and Training for Expanded Access to Essential Health Services for Underserved Populations

Carol Bales — Mon, 02 Feb 2015 18:49:46 +0000

Author's name:

Rebecca J. Bailey, Heather Ross, and Kate Tulenko

January 2015 (All day)

Investing in Health Workforce Education and Training for Expanded Access to Essential Health Services

CapacityPlus developed and applied methodologies and instruments to estimate the cost to an educational institution and its affiliated clinical practice facilities of educating a single health worker; identify targeted investments likely to increase production while maintaining the quality of graduates; and strengthen the capacity of school leaders to better manage human, financial, material, and intellectual resources. Presented at the Prince Mahidol Award Conference in Bangkok (January 26–31, 2015), this poster highlights methods and findings from costing studies performed at one medical school in South Africa and two nursing and midwifery schools in Ethiopia, as well as broader capacity assessments of 19 Nigerian health professional schools.

Developing a Human Resources for Health (HRH) Effort Index to Measure Country-Level Status in HRH

Carol Bales — Mon, 02 Feb 2015 18:30:35 +0000

Author's name:

Alfredo L. Fort, Randi Burlew, and Rachel Deussom

January 2015 (All day)

Developing a Human Resources for Health Effort Index to Measure Country-Level Status in HRH

Human resources for health (HRH) are an essential component of health systems and crucial to increased accessibility and quality of services. However, there is a scarcity of HRH indicators and the few that exist are often unreliable, inconsistently related to outcomes, or do not inform on the multidimensional nature of the area. Based on HRH and performance-based frameworks, CapacityPlus and a technical advisory group developed the HRH Effort Index to measure inputs and outputs in HRH. Presented at the Prince Mahidol Award Conference in Bangkok (January 26–31, 2015), this poster highlights preliminary results from testing the HRH Effort Index in Kenya and Nigeria.

Dominican Republic Human Resources for Health

Sarah Dwyer — Fri, 30 Jan 2015 19:15:18 +0000

Author's name:

CapacityPlus

December 2014 (All day)

Dominican Republic Human Resources for Health

The Office of Health Systems in USAID’s Global Health Bureau selected CapacityPlus’s collaboration with the Dominican Republic as one of its Top Ten Health Systems Strengthening Cases. CapacityPlus supported the Ministry of Health in a process of payroll reform and increased transparency in budgeting practices. The process revealed nearly 10,000 ghost workers—individuals who receive a salary but are not working—who represented approximately 30% of the Ministry’s budget. The Ministry began a phased approach to clean its payroll by reclaiming the salaries of the ghost workers, resulting in savings of over $6 million annually. These savings are being used to improve HIV and other health services through hiring of new health workers, increasing salaries by 10% to provide more equitable remuneration and increase motivation, eliminating user fees, and investing in other health sector reforms, such as setting up a better procurement process for HIV testing kits and antiretroviral drugs. In turn, this reinvestment is contributing to improved service delivery and health status.

Increasing the Production of Competent and Qualified Frontline Health Workers in Nigeria

Sarah Dwyer — Fri, 30 Jan 2015 19:03:35 +0000

Author's name:

Heather Ross and Rebecca Bailey

January 2015 (All day)

Increasing the Production of Competent and Qualified Frontline Health Workers in Nigeria

This case study is part of the interactive ePlatform for the World Health Organization’s guidelines on transforming and scaling up health professionals’ education and training. Findings of a rapid bottlenecks assessment of midwifery, nursing, and health technology schools in Nigeria informed CapacityPlus’s work with federal- and state-level stakeholders to develop a plan to increase the production of certified graduates. This included providing educational resources, training tutors in up-to-date clinical guidelines and computer assisted pedagogy, and supporting students at risk of dropping out through scholarships. This comprehensive support has reduced student drop-out rates and increased pass rates on national certification examinations.

Estimating the Cost of Educating and Training Nurses and Midwives: Balancing Quantity and Quality

Sarah Dwyer — Fri, 30 Jan 2015 19:00:30 +0000

Author's name:

Sophie Faye, Rebecca Bailey, Sr. Azeb Admassu, and Yemesrach Adamu

January 2015 (All day)

Estimating the Cost of Educating and Training Nurses and Midwives

This case study is part of the interactive ePlatform for the World Health Organization’s guidelines on transforming and scaling up health professionals’ education and training. Knowledge about the cost of educating and training health workers is needed to support education program planning and management and to inform advocacy for increased investment. Ethiopia’s federal ministries of health and education collaborated with CapacityPlus and the Nursing Education Partnership Initiative to conduct a cost analysis of the nursing and midwifery programs at two colleges. The objectives were to estimate the cost of producing a graduate; identify fixed-asset constraints to scaling up the quantity and/or improving quality of graduates; and simulate the new cost per graduate for interventions to increase the quality of graduates.

Building the “Educational Home”: Staying Connected to Alumni with MEPI Graduate Tracking in Tanzania

Sarah Dwyer — Fri, 30 Jan 2015 18:57:21 +0000

Author's name:

Rachel Deussom, Michael Drane, Rebecca Bailey, Zohray Talib, Rose Mwangi, Joslin Dogbe, and Moses Simuyemba

January 2015 (All day)

Building the “Educational Home”

This case study is part of the interactive ePlatform for the World Health Organization’s guidelines on transforming and scaling up health professionals’ education and training. CapacityPlus is collaborating with the Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) Coordinating Center, MEPI Physician Tracking Technical Working Group, and MEPI-supported medical schools in 11 African countries to develop resources and good practices for graduate tracking and to foster exchange through a regional graduate tracking network. The MEPI Connect graduate tracking software is helping African medical schools to remain connected with their graduates. Tracking allows institutions to assess the effectiveness of strategies to retain graduates at posts in underserved areas.

Building the “Educational Home”: Staying Connected to Alumni with MEPI Graduate Tracking in Ethiopia

Sarah Dwyer — Fri, 30 Jan 2015 18:54:21 +0000

Author's name:

Rachel Deussom, Michael Drane, Rebecca Bailey, Zohray Talib, Rose Mwangi, Joslin Dogbe, and Moses Simuyemba

January 2015 (All day)

Building the “Educational Home”

This case study is part of the interactive ePlatform for the World Health Organization’s guidelines on transforming and scaling up health professionals’ education and training. CapacityPlus is collaborating with the Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) Coordinating Center, MEPI Physician Tracking Technical Working Group, and MEPI-supported medical schools in 11 African countries to develop resources and good practices for graduate tracking and to foster exchange through a regional graduate tracking network. The MEPI Connect graduate tracking software is helping African medical schools to remain connected with their graduates. Tracking allows institutions to assess the effectiveness of strategies to retain graduates at posts in underserved areas.