The health workforce is the fulcrum on which health system performance relies. Human resources for health as a strategic area of focus is crucial to affordable, accessible and high-quality health services. The ability of a country to meet its health commitments and goals largely depends on the number, skills, competencies and availability of health workers, and on whether those workers are organized and equitably distributed to deliver integrated, people-centred health services. The health workforce is essential to achieving universal health coverage and the Sustainable Development Goals, especially Indicator 3.c.1, which relates to ”health workforce density and distribution” and improved data on human resources for health.

Health service managers around the world face increasing HRH challenges, such as:

• inadequate resources to respond to the populations’ demand for services;
• the distribution of human resources being generally poorly balanced between urban and rural areas, and between primary, secondary and tertiary levels of care;
• inefficiencies due to uncoordinated HRH practices from various stakeholders; and
• weak HRH coordination mechanisms and weak human resources for health information systems.

The Workload Indicators of Staffing Need (WISN) method is based on a health worker’s workload, with activity (time) standards applied for each workload component. This principle has long been used in business but was not employed in the health sector until the late 1990s, when the WISN method was field tested and used in several countries. 

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Publication of this Human Resources for Health journal supplement was supported by the World Health Organization (WHO). Articles have undergone the journal's standard peer review process for supplements.