The World health Organization (WHO) and the Global Health Workforce Alliance (GHWA), with its partners, are making palpable progress in steering a direction for a contemporary human resources for health agenda. Leading the WHO strategy development efforts, Jim Campbell, Executive Director GHWA & Director of the Health Workforce Department, WHO, said “there is a resurgent community on HRH who are better informed on what must be in Global Strategy and a contemporary agenda in support of sustainable workforce solutions, including the need for its governance and financing”. A global strategy relevant to the post-2015 development agenda will inspire a HRH movement of multi sectoral action and implementation at the national and global level.

"The Ebola outbreak is a clarion call to the local, national, regional and global community to step up efforts to build national capacity for ensuring health workers on the ground, at the core of resilient, integrated health systems”, said Dr. Sigrun Møgedal, former Chair of GHWA and HRH champion, who has recently been appointed by GHWA to develop an options analysis for multi-sectoral HRH governance beyond 2016. The review and analysis will be discussed by GHWAs Executive Board at its 18th Board Meeting in February 2015.

Results of initial consultations of Dr Møgedal’s work with, GHWA Board constituencies; HRH stakeholders and champions are now available online. 

The consultations on the future need for a global multi-sector platform for action on the health and social workforce now moves into the second phase, with a main focus on options.

The first phase of consultations contributed to a broadly shared understanding of issues and opportunities. Some inputs are still being received that will be incorporated into an updated phase 1 summary document. It continues to be work in process, right up to the final report of this work is written. The ongoing work on the global strategy will obviously also inform this work on the need for a global multi-sectoral platform.

This second phase of consultations will seek to map key stakeholder groups in terms of their main potential for contribution to the health and social workforce agenda, largely seen from a perspective of critical priorities in the national response – identified as institutions, integration and investments. A second set of challenges cuts across the UHC agenda (data, accountability and solidarity) and calls for stakeholders that can establish effective links between the workforce agenda and other health system elements.

Building a multi-sector platform require stakeholders that are ready to collaborate and contribute. It is therefore essential to work out in what ways interests, roles and contributions could be aligned, in order to serve shared efforts and the necessary enabling environment for moving forward. This is therefore the time for all to comment on what is presented in this phase 2 consultation document – to further improve the presentation of stakeholders and the experience with GHWA, and to make a first stab at options for organizing a multi-sector and multi-stakeholder platform. The options are at this stage not developed beyond indicating a rough direction in order to stimulate further thoughts and suggestions.

We encourage GHWA members, partners and interested parties to continue making comments and contributions to this process by emailing us at ghwa@who.int.

Currently, GHWA is the only independent platform and a neutral facilitating convener at a global level with the mandate and capacity to bring together multisectoral HRH stakeholders (state and non-state) around a common agenda. Capitalizing on its core functions and operating largely through its multisectoral membership, GHWA strives to ensure that its catalytic support triggers a cascade effect for lasting change. It is a vital contributor to global and national efforts to improve the health workforce and thus ensuring universal access to quality healthcare.

Options for a Global Multi-sector Response to HRH (For phase 2 GHWA consultations, Nov 2014)