The world health report 2006 papers
Follow-up to the World health report 2006
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Improving health worker performance: in search of promising practices
pdf, 1.05Mb
Part one introduces the concept of performance and describes the main elements influencing staff performance, its main determinants and potential strategies to address these. It includes a discussion on what generic principles should be examined, with conclusions and recommendations for health policy-makers, planners and managers. Part two consists of case studies that provide lessons learnt. -
Community health workers: what do we know about them? The state of the evidence on programmes, activities, costs and impact on health outcomes of using community health workers (CHWs)
pdf, 568kb
This paper aims to review the existent evidence on community health workers and their impact on health outcomes; to identify gaps in knowledge and evidence on the use of CHWs to deliver basic health care services; and to provide policy recommendations on the use of CHWs in response to acute shortages of health workers, particularly in areas with significant shortages of health workers, such as sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Asia. -
Community health workers: what do we know about them? Policy brief
pdf, 262kb
Background papers for The world health report 2006 - working together for health
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Counting health workers: definitions, data, methods and global results.
pdf, 157kb
This paper describes the approaches followed in assembling the global database as well as some preliminary analysis of the content of the source data. The broad picture of health workers worldwide is examined and some useful strategies for improving health workforce statistics are highlighted. -
Health workers' wages: an overview from selected countries
pdf, 258kb
The overall objective of this paper is to describe variations in health worker wages across countries. However, where data are available, the authors explore variations within countries between health workers and comparable professionals. The main issues of standardization and comparability are discussed. The results are a first attempt to understand the nature of the variability of wages across settings. -
Measuring expenditure for the health workforce: evidence and challenges
pdf, 251kb
Managing health workforce expenditure requires the generation of evidence in order to support informed policy decisions. This background paper takes a step forward in exploring HRH expenditures and presents the results of a first measurement for the health workforce in WHO Member States in the years 1998–2003. -
Estimating inflows and outflows of health service providers in sub-Saharan Africa
pdf, 281kb
The present study is an attempt to provide a preliminary analysis of inflow and outflow patterns of health service providers in sub-Saharan Africa. The analysis is limited only to three types of health workers—doctors, nurses and midwives—and to countries in the region with critical shortages of health workers. -
Will there be enough people to care? Notes on workforce implications of demographic change, 2005–2050: a background paper for the World health report 2006
pdf, 283kb
This paper aims to calculate the workforce implications of these demographic changes by projecting future health workforces for developed economies, including Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the United States of America and Canada. -
Measuring the efficiency of human resources for health for attaining health outcomes across subnational units in Brazil
pdf, 298kb
This paper documents the analytical work conducted for the World health report 2006 to provide new evidence on the relationship between the density of human resources for health and the coverage of key health interventions, at subnational level in Brazil. The analysis highlights how socioeconomic conditions of the population moderates the ability of health workers to perform their tasks efficiently and how various policies have succeeded in increasing the coverage of antenatal care services.
Tables and figures -
Inequality in access to human resources for health: measurement issues
pdf, 427kb
This paper discusses the various options to allow comparative analysis of inequalities in the distribution of health workers across and within countries, using a single summary measure of this distribution. The paper first presents the scale problem of various inequality indices, then tests how sensitive a simple ratio measure of the distribution of health workers is to changes in scale. This ratio of inequality is illustrated first with the global distribution of health workers and then with the distributions within Brazil, Indonesia and Viet Nam. -
Reassessing the relationship between human resources for health, intervention coverage and health outcomes
pdf, 329kb
This paper presents an analysis of the relationship between the availability of doctors, nurses and midwives across countries and the intervention coverage. It demonstrates that health status and levels of coverage are positively associated with health worker density. The purpose of this paper, is to determine whether these relationships are robust to the inclusion of many more countries in the data set. The authors explore alternative functional forms and estimation procedures and investigate the impact of controlling for additional determinants of health outcomes and outputs. -
The impact of HIV/AIDS on the health workforce in developing countries
pdf, 678kb
This paper addresses the influence of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on the health workforce. It shows the impact of HIV/AIDS on health systems, on morbidity and mortality among staff and on workforce motivation, performance and migration. Policy options for future staff scenarios and potential obstacles are presented, highlighting policies that could improve retention, replacement and replenishment of health workers. -
The costs of eliminating critical shortages in human resources for health [pdf 516kb]
In this paper authors describe how they calculated the costs necessary for bridging the gap that exists between the current availability of health workers and the required health workers in the year 2015. -
Macroeconomic and fiscal issues in scaling up human resources for health in low-income countries
pdf, 398kb
This paper discusses the fiscal and macroeconomic implications associated with scaling up health workforce capacity. While these general issues and concepts are relevant in all setting, the focus of the discussion is on low- income countries and sub-Saharan Africa in particular.
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Complete list of background papers
pdf, 13kb
The remaining background papers will be available shortly, please check this website for updates.
For any queries, or if you wish to contact the authors of these papers, please write to: [email protected].