• Global health trust

Global health trust

This paper from the Joint Learning Initiative, Human Resources for Health and Development examines the relationship between health outcomes and human resources for health. The authors find that the cross-country results confirm the importance of human resources for health (HRH) in affecting health outcomes. The authors acknowledge that the performance of human resources in attaining health-system goals is dependent on their distribution across occupations and geographical regions, as well as other factors such as incentive and decision-making structures. However, they conclude that HRH densities influence health outcomes independently of other determinants.

The paper recommends that investing in HRH should be explicitly considered as part of a strategy to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – in addition to raising national income per capita, reducing absolute poverty, and expanding female education. It argues that, ignoring HRH will, at best, miss an important instrument for achieving the health MDGs; at worst, it could seriously hamper progress towards these targets.

• Full text of document
• Publisher details
• Send to a friend