A small change in the health workforce of a small country can create a huge impact, insist countries attending a recent Small Countries Initiative (SCI) meeting on Human Resources for Health (HRH). The special session took place during a high-level regional meeting in Bucharest on Health and Care Workforce in Europe: Time to Act. Participants from small countries provided an update on progress in developing their HRH strategies.
Small countries highlighted the actions that are most important to them at this time, such as alignment of their education system to population needs, strengthening professional development, strengthening health information systems, and expanding the use of digital tools. Over half of the small countries reported having a mechanism in place to support HRH. This ranged from stand-alone HRH strategies, an HRH strategy which was under development, or the integration of HRH into other national strategies.
The importance of optimizing the workforce, including the redesign of skills, tasks and time distribution, is crucial for all countries, but all the more relevant for small countries, where the effectiveness of a small workforce is critically linked to health and system outcomes.
Developing national HRH strategies
The SCI HRH working group was established in 2019 to strengthen cross-country collaboration on HRH in small countries. It was launched at the Sixth High-level Meeting of the SCI and, since its start, 3 working group meetings have been held in December 2019, January 2021 (online) and April 2022, with subsequent reports and publications produced to support and advance discussions.
This special session followed up on commitments taken at previous SCI HRH working group meetings and the Eighth High-level Meeting of the SCI’s Montenegro statement, which calls for the development of national HRH strategies by 2025.