National health workforce accounts: implementation guide
Overview
With the objective to accelerate progress towards universal health coverage, and to facilitate
adoption of the Global strategy on human resources for health: Workforce 2030, the Sixtyninth World Health Assembly resolution WHA69.19 in 2016 urged all Member States to
consolidate “a core set of human resources for health data […] as well as progressive implementation of national health workforce accounts”.
Reporting on standardized indicators on HRH was further encouraged by the Health Assembly in
2017, which called for the enforcement of the recommendations recently published by the
High-Level Commission on Health Employment and Economic Growth. In line with the Global
strategy on human resources for health, the 10th recommendation of the High-Level Commission, established by the United Nations Secretary-General in 2016, specifically highlights the
need for data, information and accountability to “undertake robust research and analysis of
health labour markets, using harmonized metrics and methodologies, to strengthen evidence,
accountability and action”.
The National Health Workforce Accounts (NHWA) is a system through which countries progressively improve the availability, quality, and use of data on their health workforce, and thus
achieving universal health coverage, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and
other national and global health objectives. While this Implementation Guide uses the generic
wording of the NHWA, an equivalent system may already exist in a country to monitor information on the health workforce, using similar terminology such as human resources for health
(HRH) registry or health workforce observatory, that fulfils the same objective.
The NHWA follows a labour market analysis framework in which key indicators have to be
monitored to provide a comprehensive overview of the dynamics of the health workforce in the
country. This framework encompasses several sectors to produce an inclusive assessment of
HRH data, requiring not only information on the density of health workers, but also information
on health workforce education, finance, migration, etc.
In addition, a web platform was elaborated for
countries to store data, monitor their indicators and report key national statistics on their health
workforce to WHO. Access to the web platform and to NHWA supporting documents is available
on the WHO Health Workforce Department website.