Network of the Observatories of Human resources in the Americas
Member profile
In response to needs of the countries in the 1990s, WHO-PAHO started a comprehensive program of action to strengthen the steering role of the health authorities to produce and disseminate knowledge and instruments that will lead to better policies, regulations, management, and education of human resources for health. One key initiative was the creation of the Observatory of Human Resources in Health (OHRH), which was launched in 1999 in Chile. OHRH is a cooperative initiative among the countries of the Region of the Americas established to produce, analyze and share information and knowledge necessary for:
- integrating human resources in the health policy agenda; and
- improving the development of policies on human resources.
Main activities
OHRH supports the creation of observatory groups at the national level integrated by all relevant institutional stakeholders (ministries of health, social security institutes, universities, professional associations, and others) that come together to discuss and analyze data, monitor trends, prioritize issues and build consensus for policy interventions. The name “Observatory” reflects the insistence given to the use of available information and evidence to guide the policy-making process. The technical cooperation provided by PAHO aims to support the development of a set of core data that would allow for trends analysis and international comparisons in four major areas: quality of labor and labor regimes; education and basic training of human resources; productivity and quality of services; and governance and labor conflict within the health sector. OHRH currently represents a network of 20 national observatory groups.
Links to the health workforce crisis
OHRH's objective of the Observatory has been to improve the use of knowledge and information on human resources by relevant stakeholders in order to produce policies and instruments of intervention. The Observatory has managed to achieve this objective by promoting the creative use of available information without attempting to substitute existing information systems or creating new ones. The main functions of the national observatory groups are to monitor trends that have an impact on the task of defining human resource policies as a shared agenda with society, in order to combine priorities and values of the reform agenda and the interests of stakeholders, and also to take into account evidence showing the needs of the population. The experience developed by the OHRH has proved to be an effective way to advocate on the importance of human resources issues. The main strategy of the Observatory has been to provide a framework, to formulate a general agenda and to support an interinstitutional and intersectoral environment for the development of human resources policies at the national level, reinforcing the use of available information.
Call for knowledge information:
Alliance Members are invited to submit any relevant knowledge products such as documents, reports, tools, multimedia, links to specific project web sites by sending an email to ghwa@who.int. The Alliance Secretariat will publish relevant products on the Member's page.
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