In Uganda, attracting and retaining health workers in rural and underserved areas has proven difficult. Positions staffed by the Ministry of Health in many of these areas remain 50% vacant. The Ministry of Health is committed to pursuing a package of strategies to make rural postings more attractive. One important step in determining which package of strategies will be most effective is to estimate which strategies health workers themselves most prefer. To this end, the Ministry of Health, in partnership with CapacityPlus, conducted a discrete choice experiment survey among current students in health training programs as well as health workers practicing in rural districts to investigate preferences for potential attraction and retention strategies. The results constitute an important input to the policy-making process related to the identification, costing, and selection of possible retention interventions for implementation. Read more »
The Rapid Retention Survey Toolkit is designed to help countries determine what would motivate health workers to accept and remain in rural posts. It builds on the World Health Organization global policy recommendations for rural retention and is based on the discrete choice experiment (DCE), a powerful research method that identifies the trade-offs professionals are willing to make between specific job characteristics and determines their preferences for various incentive packages, including the probability of accepting a post in a rural facility. Employing a simplified version of the DCE methodology, the toolkit guides HR managers through the survey process to quickly assess health students’ and health workers’ motivational preferences to accept a position and continue working in underserved facilities. The results can be used to create evidence-based incentive packages that are appropriate within a country’s health labor market. 
