Who’s Doing What in the HRH World?
I still find out most of my important health workforce information via word of mouth. Yes, I regularly read the latest journal articles and subscribe to half a dozen human resources for health (HRH) and health systems listservs, follow over 250 people on Twitter, and receive RSS updates from several HRH websites, but I never seem to get the information I really need. Who is working to strengthen health managers? What country is interested in designing a retention package for its health workers? What funder might be interested in funding a survey of how health workers currently use their mobile phones and how they would like to use them to do their jobs better? In this digital world there has to be a better way for us to share information.
A friend recently informed me about a major HRH project that had been presented at a conference and has large overlaps with my work. I searched for the project on the Internet but found nothing. I searched several HRH websites but found nothing. So then I had to call my friend back, find out who presented the program, find their contact information, and give them a call. This is clearly not the most efficient way to partner and share information.
Imagine how much more difficult this is for our colleagues in developing countries who may not have the chance to attend conferences and speak with HRH colleagues on a regular basis. I remember speaking recently to a Malawi School of Medicine faculty in charge of admissions who was completely unaware of the huge body of evidence on how targeted student recruitment and community-based training could greatly increase retention of graduates in underserved areas.
At the health workforce roundtable at the recent global summit on health system strengthening sponsored by the New York University College of Nursing, there was a general consensus that the global health workforce community needs some kind of marketplace or even just an “HRH phonebook.” We had leaders from developing country governments, the African Development Bank, USAID, CapacityPlus, the Global Health Workforce Alliance (GHWA), and the World Health Organization admitting that it was difficult for them to get the information they need and find the right partners.
The theme emerged that there is a burning need for the community to have an online, searchable marketplace to share ideas and identify partners working on similar subjects. Such a site could also record evidence so we can build upon one another’s successes rather than reinventing the wheel. With HRH funding and expertise as limited as it is, no one organization has the resources to accomplish what they would like. For example, CapacityPlus is currently teaming up with Health Systems 20/20 and the World Bank to do what we believe to be the first systematic multicountry study of health worker wages. None of us could have completed this important work by ourselves. We happened to have formed the partnership through existing relationships. However, imagine how powerful it would be if, through a simple search, we could easily find partners all over the world willing to cooperate on mutual goals and get decision-makers the evidence they need.
This is a conversation we hope to take forward with the GHWA to see whether the GHWA website or CapacityPlus’s HRH Global Resource Center would be the best location for a directory of global health workforce expertise, initiatives, and events as well as organizations and governments conducting HRH work. Such a site could facilitate sharing of tools, help form productive partnerships, prevent duplication of effort, and be searchable by topic or country, with contact information, and the ability to post collaboration requests. I guess until that happens I’ll just keep picking up the phone.
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Photo courtesy of Kate Tulenko.
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