CapacityPlus, with the USAID ASSIST Project and the World Bank, cohosted a knowledge-sharing and dissemination event at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, on February 18. The three-hour program focused on the latest evidence from country applications of innovations to strengthen health workforce recruitment, retention, and productivity. Through a combination of panel presentations, interactive roundtable groups, and moderated question-and-answer sessions, participants learned about and discussed various approaches and tools that can be used to develop policies to strengthen recruitment, retention, and productivity and improve access to high-quality family planning, reproductive health, HIV/AIDS, and other health services. Read the related news and access videos and presentations: 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. 
