Technical Brief No. 18, December 2009. Describes several approaches used to achieve needed changes in service delivery practice, and provides recommendations for actions at the local level.

Training Health Workers in Africa: Documenting Faith-Based Organizationsâ€™ Contributions

Technical Brief No. 17, November 2009. Provides information on pre-service and in-service trainings offered by faith-based organizations, with a focus on nursing and midwifery pre-service training in Malawi, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

Health Worker Retention and Performance Initiatives: Making Better Strategic Choices

Technical Brief No. 16, September 2009. Proposes a shared approach to retention and performance improvement based on existing motivation theories and experience in the international health field. Also available in French.

Worker Retention in Human Resources for Health: Catalyzing and Tracking Change

Technical Brief No. 15, March 2009. Documents some contributions made from 2005 to 2008 in the area of health worker retention, including country-level experiences, emerging lessons from practical schemes and key reflections about retention initiatives. Also available in French.

Human Resources for Health: Tackling the Human Resource Management Piece of the Puzzle

Technical Brief No. 14, December 2008. Describes the human resource management (HRM) problems that contribute to the health worker crisis, identifies specific strategic actions to address these HRM challenges and concludes with examples of innovations to stimulate programmatic funding opportunities for strengthening human resources for health. Also available in French and Spanish.

HIV Care for Health Workers: Perceptions and Needs

Technical Brief No. 13, December 2008. Provides results from a participatory study on health workers' needs for HIV care and makes policy recommendations based on health workers' self-reported information. Also available in French and Spanish.

An Overview of Human Resources for Health (HRH) Projection Models

Technical Brief No. 12, August 2008. Provides a rapid review of different health workforce projection approaches with a list of references for more information. Also available in French and Spanish.

Building the Bridge from Human Resources Data to Effective Decisions: Ten Pillars of Successful Data-Driven Decision-Making

Technical Brief No. 11, August 2008. Presents ten fundamental and practical pillars to aid HR managers, practitioners and policy analysts in building a bridge from HR data and reports to effective HR policy and management decisions. Also available in French and Spanish.

Data Quality Considerations in Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS) Strengthening

Technical Brief No. 10, July 2008. Discusses concepts of data quality and provides examples of the importance of data management specific to the field of human resources for health. Also available in French and Spanish.

Human Resources for Health (HRH) Strategic Planning

Technical Brief No. 9, January 2008. Provides guidance on HRH strategic planning, illustrated with examples. Also available in French and Spanish.

Strengthening Health Professional Associations

Technical Brief No. 8, February 2007. Discusses various approaches for strengthening professional associations and outlines the benefits and challenges of such efforts. Also available in French and Spanish.

Increasing the Motivation of Health Care Workers

Technical Brief No. 7, September 2006. Defines motivation; discusses relationships between motivation, job satisfaction and retention; reviews evidence and considers what works in developing countries. Also available in French and Spanish.

Workforce Planning for the Health Sector

Technical Brief No. 6, August 2006. Examines the need for workforce planning, reviews basic concepts and practical issues, summarizes key steps for developing a workforce plan. Also available in French and Spanish.

Task Shifting for a Strategic Skill Mix

Technical Brief No. 5, June 2006. Based on a review of the literature and country examples, the brief describes why task shifting is important and highlights some key steps in planning for, developing and supporting cadres involved in task shifting. Also available in French and Spanish.

Using Collaborative Approaches to Reach Human Resources for Health (HRH) Goals

Technical Brief No. 4, June 2006. Offers best practices and lessons learned from a combination of key themes in current literature and practice regarding the benefits of collaborative ventures. Also available in French and Spanish.

Building Stronger Human Resources for Health through Licensure, Certification and Accreditation

Technical Brief No. 3, April 2006. Highlights health care regulation, quality assurance in human resources for health, licensure and registration, accreditation and credentialing mechanisms. Also available in French and Spanish.

Human Resources Management (HRM) in the Health Sector

Technical Brief No. 2, March 2006. Describes the HRM context, best practices, HRMâ€™s role in the health sector and improving HRM technical assistance for the health sector. Also available in French and Spanish.

Retention of Health Care Workers in Low-Resource Settings: Challenges and Responses

Technical Brief No. 1, February 2006. Guides readers through the problem of low retention, the causes of turnover, actions to address turnover, managing migration and approaches to retention. Also available in French and Spanish.

Addressing the Crisis in Human Resources for Health

December 2006. The Capacity Project's James McCaffery outlines promising practices to strengthen human resources for health. Part of the "Global Health Technical Briefs" series.

For additional publications and resources, see: