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Rural Health Workforce Australia is the national peak body for advocacy and representation on Australian rural and remote health workforce issues. RHWA represents Rural Workforce Agencies in all states and the Northern Territory of Australia. Rural Health Workforce Australia is the national peak body for advocacy and representation on Australian rural and remote health workforce issues. RHWA represents Rural Workforce Agencies in all states and the Northern Territory of Australia.

Partnership with the World Health Organization

Dr Kim Webber, CEO of Rural Health Workforce Australia, is a Technical Advisor to a World Health Organization expert panel.  The panel's focus is on increasing access to health workers in remote and rural areas through improved retention.

Kim is assisting WHO with the development of international guidelines and policy recommendations, due to be released in 2010.

Terms of reference for the experts group on developing WHO policy recommendations and guidelines on increasing access to health workers in remote and rural areas through improved retention
 
Background

There is a worldwide crisis of human resources for health, expressed by acute shortages and maldistribution of health workers in many developing countries. Some solutions to the crisis envisage scaling up the production of health workers in crisis countries. Yet educating and training more health workers is not enough to overcome the health workforce crisis. Equal attention must be paid to keeping health workers gainfully employed and equitably distributed once they have entered the workforce. Failure to reach vulnerable communities is a major obstacle to progress on global health and development goals. Moreover, the issue of health workforce retention concerns not only developing countries but is similarly challenging for developed countries.

Several calls for action have recently drawn the attention to the need for governments to take urgent measures to ensure their populations have access to adequately trained and supported health workers, in particular in remote and rural areas . Improved recruitment and retention of health workers in remote and rural areas will help WHO deliver on the Director General’s pledge to return to the values, principles and approaches of primary health care, as it will help countries to move forward on two of the four critical reforms for the renewal of PHC, that is ensuring universal coverage and people-centred service delivery.

In response to these calls for action, the Health Workforce Migration and Retention Unit of the Department of Human Resources for Health is embarking on a new programme to help countries tackle the thorny issues of health workforce recruitment, retention and equitable distribution. This programme includes:

  • Building the evidence base on effective retention strategies
  • Supporting countries to evaluate and adapt retention strategies
  • Developing and disseminating global policy recommendations and guidelines on improving access to health workers in remote and real areas.

As crucial as this topic is to protecting and promoting health and wellbeing, specific policy recommendations and operational solutions that countries can adapt to their own context are not readily available. With this programme decision makers will have access to the best available evidence on the impact and effectiveness of various strategies that have been tried and tested. The policy guidelines and recommendations will be valuable tools for countries to use when introducing or revising their health workforce policies and strategies. These recommendations will complement other policy instruments, such as for example the code of practice on the international recruitment of health personnel.

Scope of the work for the expert group

The experts group is a key component in the process of developing the policy recommendations and guidelines. Policy recommendations need to be based on evidence, hence the need for experts to identify, discuss and analyse the evidence, and propose policy recommendations, which will be further discussed through country consultations.The experts group should at minimum develop and agree on the recommendations and review the final guidelines. A secondary purpose of the group is to advocate for the implementation of the guidelines and policy recommendations at country level.

The main functions of the experts are to: 

  1. To identify and support the collection of evidence
  2. To advise on the interpretation of the evidence, with explicit consideration of the overall balance of risks and benefits
  3. To advise on the choice of important outcomes for decision making and developing recommendations
  4. To formulate recommendations, taking into account diverse values and preferences
  5. To contribute to writing sections of the guidelines.
Composition of the expert group 

The group includes representatives from all WHO regions, including professional organizations, content experts, experts in guidelines development methods, as well as experts in broad HRH policy development field. An effort will be made to include various types of expertise, such as policy makers, geographers, health economists, statisticians, health workforce management, labour market analysts, etc.

They act in their own name, and will not necessarily represent the views of the organizations they belong to. Declaration of interest will be provided at the beginning of the consultative process.