Policy and Planning

The Health Workforce Information Ecosystem

Health workforce information systems have been proliferating in countries to address different health workforce needs, including management systems in the public and private sector, regulatory information systems including professional council registration and licensure, and training information systems. However, these different systems are not reaching their full potential due to failure to work as an interoperable whole. Presented at the GETHealth Summit in Dublin, Ireland (November 13–14, 2014), this poster describes work to develop a new data exchange standard, Care Services Discovery. This technology is open and collaborative, available for support by a wide variety of technologies, including iHRIS, DHIS 2, and UNICEF’s RapidPro platform. Open source technologies and open standards approaches make a formidable combination to address information needs.

In the transition to the post-Millennium Development Goals era, many low and middle-income countries will be making significant shifts in their national health policies. The leadership that is drawn upon to make policy changes tends to be in ministries of health, flagship hospitals, physicians and nurses associations, and social protection entities. Health professional schools are an additional and valuable—yet often overlooked—source of leadership in health reform and health policy-making. This technical brief highlights some examples of how the education and research leadership of health professional schools has engaged, influenced, or obtained resources from national policy-makers and others with significant influence on the health sector. The brief also reviews instances in which different health educational institutions and professional associations have worked to shape national responses to health system needs.

This chapter by CapacityPlus/IntraHealth International authors appears in MCHIP’s publication, Developing and Strengthening Community Health Worker Programs at Scale: A Reference Guide and Case Studies for Program Managers and Policymakers, which provides an in-depth review of issues and questions that should be considered when addressing key issues relevant for large-scale community health worker programs. Chapter 8 considers key questions, recommendations, and challenges for community health worker recruitment planning and implementation, including selection, resource availability, and retention.