Global Health

2014’s Top Global Health Stories—and What They Have to Do with Health Workers

Sarah Dwyer — Mon, 29 Dec 2014 14:20:04 +0000

As 2014 comes to an end, the international development community stands on the cusp of major new progress, particularly in global health and development—but the war and disease that marked this year could hinder that progress for decades to come. Health workers labored on the front lines of some of 2014’s most prominent events, which will likely affect global health and the well-being for all 7 billion of us as we move into 2015 and beyond. So let's take a look back at some of 2014’s biggest global health and development stories. Some good, some bad, all illuminating as we enter the new year.

Author's name:

Margarite Nathe

Publication Date:

December 2014

Let’s Talk Tactics

Carol Bales — Mon, 25 Nov 2013 18:13:31 +0000

This post was originally published on VITAL, the blog of IntraHealth International.

Ever since the first two global gatherings in Kampala in 2008 and Bangkok in 2011, human resources for health—or HRH, as this field has come to be known—has matured into one of the world’s biggest development bastions still to be conquered.

I had the good fortune to attend the Third Global Forum on Human Resources for Health in sunny Recife, Brazil, last week and moderate a couple of sessions and events. Whenever I join thousands of participants at such global conferences, I look back and wonder: Did I learn something? Was it worth the time and effort? And now what?

Author's name:

Ok Pannenborg, guest blogger

Publication Date:

November 2013

Health Workers Can Help Stamp Out Poverty

Carol Bales — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 19:26:45 +0000

This piece was originally published on InterAction’s blog on 10/17/12.

They say wealthier is healthier, and there’s evidence to back that up.

While money alone can’t buy good health, the poor are significantly more likely to experience poor health. But like many of poverty’s symptoms, poor health can also cause poverty.

A severe illness can obliterate a family’s financial health, whether from the cost of treatment or a loss of livelihood. You may know someone who lost a job, a home, or financial security after receiving treatment for a devastating diagnosis.

Author's name:

Corinne Farrell

Publication Date:

October 2012

Health Worker Strikes: What Can the Global Health Community Do to Help?

Sarah Dwyer — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 21:22:44 +0000

Have you noticed the large number of health worker strikes happening all over the world—in Sudan, Israel, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Spain, Montenegro, the Canary Islands, Australia, Argentina, and other places? As I read the news the past few weeks, I started thinking about the impact these strikes have on the people in need of care as well as the intrinsic right of any worker to fight for fair treatment, wages, and working conditions.

Strikes aren’t always a simple matter of salary, but in most recent examples I’ve read about, money was the core cause. While we can’t pretend that strikes by health workers don’t put innocent lives at risk, health care providers are still entitled to the same rights as other workers. Many health workers have poorly paid jobs with inadequate resources, the threat of violence, and a high risk of infection from HIV or other infectious diseases. The health and well-being of any country’s people depends on these workers, so it is difficult to understand why countries would risk a strike rather than do everything they can to provide adequate salaries, or in some cases even a basic living wage.

Author's name:

Rebecca Rhodes

Publication Date:

November 2011

Community Health Workers: Meeting the Unmet Need for Family Planning in West and Central Africa

jennifer — Tue, 31 May 2011 13:44:43 +0000

A recent New York Times article featured an updated United Nations forecast that projects the world’s population will reach 10.1 billion by the end of the century, rather than stabilizing at nine billion midcentury as previously predicted. In part, these high rates of population growth are fueled by lower than expected declines in fertility in some of the poorer regions of the world—with the slowest fertility declines observed in West and Central Africa.

Behind the data
Demographers and other global health professionals argue that these sustained high rates of fertility and population growth are the result of a weakened commitment to family planning (FP) programs in the last two decades following a significant focus on FP during the 1970s and 1980s.

Author's name:

Sara Pacqué-Margolis and Amanda Puckett

Publication Date:

May 2011

Only Human: The Challenge of Intentional Knowledge Management

jennifer — Tue, 17 May 2011 13:47:02 +0000

The last week was a bit of a whirlwind, as I spent Thursday and Friday in Washington, DC at the KM Impact Challenge unConference. There, I shared CapacityPlus’s experiences measuring the success of the HRH Global Resource Center.

I left the conference holding a stack of new contacts’ business cards and brainstorming uses for network analyses. I said to myself, on Monday I’ll tell my colleagues all about the unConference. Then my return flight was delayed. I got home late, rose early, spent hours at the emergency room with my three-year-old getting stitches, cleaned my house, came to work on Monday, filled out an expense report, wrote a trip report, sorted through 400 unread e-mails, and my “to do” list exploded.

Author's name:

Corinne Farrell

Publication Date:

May 2011

Asking Smart Questions: Where Are Health Workers within Service Integration?

jennifer — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 20:24:23 +0000

President Obama’s Global Health Initiative (GHI) argues that its intended health impacts will be accomplished most effectively through a “smart” integration of services.

In an effort to share the empirical evidence demonstrating different service integration models’ effects on health outcomes, the US Government recently hosted a two-day meeting that brought together researchers, host country and international implementing partners, advocates, and US Government program leaders.

This forum provided many opportunities to discuss what is known about the health workforce as a critical system component of service integration.

Author's name:

Sara Pacqué-Margolis

Publication Date:

April 2011

Tracking and Counting 140,000 New Health Workers

jennifer — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 17:10:03 +0000

The PEPFAR Monitoring and Evaluation and Human Resources for Health Technical Working Groups asked CapacityPlus to develop tools and guidance to support country team efforts in tracking and counting the new health workers being trained with PEPFAR support.

As part of its reauthorization, PEPFAR now includes an indicator that mandates its contribution to addressing the health workforce crisis. The legislation states that PEPFAR will “…help partner countries to train and support retention of health care professionals and paraprofessionals, with the target of training and retaining at least 140,000 new health [workers].”

Conducting interviews
Dykki Settle and I began this work by conducting telephone interviews with 13 PEPFAR country teams to determine what activities were underway to increase health worker production, and what activities were being counted toward the 140,000. We then visited Tanzania to further explore these trends. After analyzing all of these data, one main ground truth emerged—it takes a systems approach to produce health workers.

Author's name:

Dana Singleton

Publication Date:

December 2010

Preventing AIDS Deaths Need Not Be a Fight: A Health Systems Approach

jennifer — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 18:18:42 +0000

In the Washington Post article “Rage, panic in AIDS fight,” David Brown alleges that the goal of health systems strengthening is “hard-to-define.” In fact, it is not.

Whatever the disease or health sector priority—be it HIV/AIDS, malaria, family planning, labor and delivery, or pneumonia—six components of the health system must be functioning and integrated in order for health impacts to be maximized. These components are:

Service delivery
Medical products, vaccines, and technology
Financing
Health information systems
Leadership and governance
The health workforce—arguably most important of all.

Author's name:

Sara Pacqué-Margolis

Publication Date:

August 2010

Bottlenecks: Addressing the AIDS Epidemic through Increasing Human Resources for Health

jennifer — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 19:48:05 +0000

This post was originally published on the IntraHealth International blog.

In a world where over 33 million people are living with AIDS it is imperative to address the human resources for health (HRH) crisis. The critical questions and solutions generated by this discussion are a step towards a world without AIDS.

I had the opportunity to attend a panel at the International AIDS Conference in Vienna that focused on strategies for the HRH crisis. The panelists agreed that HRH is a critical problem, but one without an easy or quick solution. The lack of human resources, especially in areas most affected by HIV and AIDS, has made combating the disease a challenging and complex problem.

Author's name:

Nola Bower-Smith

Publication Date:

July 2010

A World of Difference: Global Health on I Street and in India

Sarah Dwyer — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 13:32:19 +0000

As the daughter of a diplomat, my life has been characterized by an endless cascade of people, places, opportunities, experiences, and contrasts. The theme of my past two summers has been global health, but my current internship working in monitoring and evaluation at CapacityPlus is almost the antithesis of my volunteer work in a rural eye hospital in India last year.

Two very different summers
Although I shiver in the hyperactively air-conditioned Washington DC office, I enjoy my own cubicle complete with a laptop and phone and big swirling chair, and I appreciate immensely the opportunity to interact with colleagues who’ve led incredible lives. I take lots of notes, work on compiling an indicator compendium to measure the state of human resources for health, and am starting to learn how global health is affected on a policy level.

Author's name:

Sylvia Kauffman

Publication Date:

July 2010