The health workforce has received major policy attention over the past decade, driven in part by the need to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and more recently the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and universal health coverage (UHC). There is wide acceptance that a health workforce sufficient in numbers, adequately distributed, and well performing is a central health systems input and critical for the achievements of these goals. Countries across all income groups are facing similar challenges in delivering an evidence-based response to address or strengthen the following: (
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The health workforce has received major policy attention over the past decade, driven in part by the need to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and more recently the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and universal health coverage (UHC). There is wide acceptance that a health workforce sufficient in numbers, adequately distributed, and well performing is a central health systems input and critical for the achievements of these goals. Countries across all income groups are facing similar challenges in delivering an evidence-based response to address or strengthen the following: (1) tensions between need, supply, and demand for health workers; (2) increasing acceleration of domestic and international migration of health professionals; (3) imbalances in the composition, skills, performance, and distribution of health workers; (4) leadership, governance, and management weaknesses; and (5) limited data, evidence, and accountability. Many of these issues can be better understood and addressed through the lens of health labor market analysis. This book, produced jointly by the World Bank, the University of California, Berkeley, and the World Health Organization (WHO), aims to be a contribution toward the how.
Edited excerpts from publication.
The chapters are as follows: Overview: tools and data needs to guide evidence-based policy making on human resources for health / Christopher H. Herbst, Jim Campbell, Richard M. Scheffler, and Christophe Lemiere; A labor market framework for human resources for health in low- and middle-income countries / Richard M. Scheffler; Data requirements for the economic analysis of health labor markets / Anthony Scott, Edson C. Araujo, Genta Menkulasi, and Robert Cohen; Demand-based and needs-based forecasts for health workers / Tim Bruckner, Jenny Liu, and Richard M. Scheffler; Measuring and analyzing production supply / Kate Tulenko, Atef El Maghraby, Agnes Soucat, Alex Preker, and Tim Bruckner; Health worker labor supply, absenteeism, and job choice / Pieter Serneels, Tomas Lievens, and Damas Butera; Migration of health care professionals from Sub-Saharan Africa: issues, data, and evidence / Caglar Ozden; Measuring the performance of health workers / Kenneth Leonard and Ottar Maestad; Analyzing the determinants of health worker performance / Kenneth Leonard and Ottar Maestad; Measuring and analyzing salaries and incentives / Wanda Jaskiewicz, Christophe Lemiere, David Phillips, Joanne Spetz, and Eric Keuffel; Survey techniques to capture sensitive information from health workers: an example of their application in Liberia / David Phillips, Christopher H. Herbst, and Yah M. Zolia.
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