Why Do Health Labour Market Forces Matter?

Human resources for health have been recognized as essential to the development of responsive and effective health systems. Low- and middle-income countries seeking to achieve universal health coverage face human resource constraints – whether in the form of health worker shortages, maldistribution...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors:	McPake, Barbara, Maeda, Akiko, Correia Araújo, Edson, Lemiere, Christophe, El Maghraby, Atef, Cometto, Giorgio
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	en_US
Published:	World Health Organization 2015
Subjects:	health labor markets health system strengthening
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/23223

id	okr-10986-23223
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-232232021-04-23T14:04:13Z Why Do Health Labour Market Forces Matter? McPake, Barbara Maeda, Akiko Correia Araújo, Edson Lemiere, Christophe El Maghraby, Atef Cometto, Giorgio health labor markets health system strengthening Human resources for health have been recognized as essential to the development of responsive and effective health systems. Low- and middle-income countries seeking to achieve universal health coverage face human resource constraints – whether in the form of health worker shortages, maldistribution of workers or poor worker performance – that seriously undermine their ability to achieve well-functioning health systems. Although much has been written about the human resource crisis in the health sector, labor economic frameworks have seldom been applied to analyze the situation and little is known or understood about the operation of labor markets in low- and middle-income countries. Traditional approaches to addressing human resource constraints have focused on workforce planning: estimating health workforce requirements based on a country’s epidemiological and demographic profile and scaling up education and training capacities to narrow the gap between the “needed” number of health workers and the existing number. However, this approach neglects other important factors that influence human resource capacity, including labor market dynamics and the behavioral responses and preferences of the health workers themselves. This paper describes how labor market analysis can contribute to a better understanding of the factors behind human resource constraints in the health sector and to a more effective design of policies and interventions to address them. The premise is that a better understanding of the impact of health policies on health labor markets, and subsequently on the employment conditions of health workers, would be helpful in identifying an effective strategy towards the progressive attainment of universal health coverage. 2015-12-04T18:06:35Z 2015-12-04T18:06:35Z 2013-11 Journal Article Bulletin of the World Health Organization http://hdl.handle.net/10986/23223 en_US CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo World Bank World Health Organization Publications & Research :: Journal Article Publications & Research
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	en_US
topic	health labor markets health system strengthening
spellingShingle	health labor markets health system strengthening McPake, Barbara Maeda, Akiko Correia Araújo, Edson Lemiere, Christophe El Maghraby, Atef Cometto, Giorgio Why Do Health Labour Market Forces Matter?
description	Human resources for health have been recognized as essential to the development of responsive and effective health systems. Low- and middle-income countries seeking to achieve universal health coverage face human resource constraints – whether in the form of health worker shortages, maldistribution of workers or poor worker performance – that seriously undermine their ability to achieve well-functioning health systems. Although much has been written about the human resource crisis in the health sector, labor economic frameworks have seldom been applied to analyze the situation and little is known or understood about the operation of labor markets in low- and middle-income countries. Traditional approaches to addressing human resource constraints have focused on workforce planning: estimating health workforce requirements based on a country’s epidemiological and demographic profile and scaling up education and training capacities to narrow the gap between the “needed” number of health workers and the existing number. However, this approach neglects other important factors that influence human resource capacity, including labor market dynamics and the behavioral responses and preferences of the health workers themselves. This paper describes how labor market analysis can contribute to a better understanding of the factors behind human resource constraints in the health sector and to a more effective design of policies and interventions to address them. The premise is that a better understanding of the impact of health policies on health labor markets, and subsequently on the employment conditions of health workers, would be helpful in identifying an effective strategy towards the progressive attainment of universal health coverage.
format	Journal Article
author	McPake, Barbara Maeda, Akiko Correia Araújo, Edson Lemiere, Christophe El Maghraby, Atef Cometto, Giorgio
author_facet	McPake, Barbara Maeda, Akiko Correia Araújo, Edson Lemiere, Christophe El Maghraby, Atef Cometto, Giorgio
author_sort	McPake, Barbara
title	Why Do Health Labour Market Forces Matter?
title_short	Why Do Health Labour Market Forces Matter?
title_full	Why Do Health Labour Market Forces Matter?
title_fullStr	Why Do Health Labour Market Forces Matter?
title_full_unstemmed	Why Do Health Labour Market Forces Matter?
title_sort	why do health labour market forces matter?
publisher	World Health Organization
publishDate	2015
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/23223
_version_	1764453250731343872

Why Do Health Labour Market Forces Matter?

Similar Items