Optimizing health worker roles for maternal and newborn health
The World Health Organization’s recommendations on optimizing the roles of health workers aim to help address critical health workforce shortages that slow down progress towards the health-related Millennium Development Goals. A more rational distribution of tasks and responsibilities among cadres of health workers can significantly improve both access and cost-effectiveness – for example by training and enabling ‘mid-level’ and ‘lay’ health workers to perform specific interventions otherwise provided only by cadres with longer (and sometimes more specialized) training.
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Download recommendations
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These recommendations are intended for health policy-makers, managers and other stakeholders at a regional, national and international level. WHO hopes that countries will adapt and implement them to meet local needs. The recommendations were developed through a formal, structured process including a thorough review of available evidence. The process and the recommendations are described in the related documents.
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Annexes
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Annex 1: Cadre definitions used in the project
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Annex 2: List of participants in the scoping and two final panel meetings
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Annex 3: The scoping questions
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Annex 4: The criteria used in moving from evidence to recommendations (the DECIDE framework)
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Annex 5: Frameworks related to lay health workers
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Annex 6: Frameworks related to the other cadres (auxiliary nurses, auxiliary nurse midwives, midwives, nurses, associate clinicians, advanced level associate clinicians, non-specialist doctors)
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Annex 7: Evidence base (GRADE evidence profile, summaries of findings for reviews of qualitative evidence, and citations for included reviews)
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Annex 8: Contextualizing the guidelines – workbook
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