“Schools and programs of public health must take an active role.” – Laura Magaña GNAPH President
At the World Health Assembly last week, delegates adopted a substantial resolution on the Public Health and Health care workforces. Many of the recommendations urge governments and their Health Ministries to ‘care for the careers’, supporting a workforce which is greatly depleted after COVID, conflicts, and major disasters caused by climate breakdown. Health workers are at the frontline in all these threats to health and are suffering considerable burnout and loss of morale, often feeling unable to meet the expectations of political leaders and of the populations and patients they serve. A number of countries also urged enforcement of the international code on health care worker recruitment. Health ministries are asked not to compete across borders, recruiting from health systems in the Global South, in greatest need of their own home-grown health workforces.
Significantly for the public health community, the resolution calls on the Director General to prioritize resources for workforce development. (Recommendation 3.1) Specifically, regarding the public health workforce, the WHA resolution asks the Director General to:
“promote investments in education, training, employment and retention of the health and care workforce, accelerate progress towards meeting target 3.c of the Sustainable Development Goals, and strengthen capacities to prevent, prepare for and respond to public health emergencies, including workforce surge capacity during public health events, with a special focus on countries and regions facing the most critical health and care workforce challenges, providing technical and methodological support for rebuilding and strengthening the health workforce in countries impacted by conflicts and the loss of professional staff” (Recommendation 3.2)
Schools of public health stand ready to support the WHO Director in delivering the education, training, employment and retention strategies the WHA supported. Recommendation 3.5 is particularly important and welcome:
“to support countries, in collaboration with associations, institutions and schools of public health, to implement technical guidance and tools to strengthen workforce capacity to deliver essential public health functions, including health emergency prevention, preparedness and response, and the implementation of the International Health Regulations, building on existing initiatives to strengthen availability, accessibility, acceptability, and quality of a skilled, trained and multidisciplinary global health emergency workforce while ensuring a safe and healthy working environment.” (Recommendation 3.5)
Additional recommendations call to “facilitate Member States’ access to data, knowledge, expertise, guidance and good practices on health and care workforce leadership, management and regulation, education, training and adoption of digital health technology, employment, deployment and retention, gender equality, and international mobility and migration” and “strengthen workforce information systems to enable international monitoring and inform acceleration plans and investments for education, training and employment”.
This resolution is a major milestone for the Global Network for Academic Public Health. We have been involved for over three-years in the work of the WHO Roadmap for Public Health and emergency workforce. Our members have been active in the Roadmap steering group since 2022, and in providing technical expertise into the themes of defining essential public health functions, devising competences and curricula to deliver the functions, and defining and monitoring levels of public health workforce. Extensive tools for competence and curriculum development can be found on the WHO health workforce web page, along with the revised Essential Public Health Functions.
As GNAPH President Laura Magaña said, “this marks a significant milestone in the global recognition of the urgent need to strengthen public health education and training—and to invest in the life-saving services that public health professionals deliver every day.”
GNAPH President-elect John Middleton is co-chair of the Implementation group for the competencies and outcomes toolkit, Action Area 2, developed as part of the WHO Roadmap. With Co-chair Leanne Coombe from the World Federation of Public Health Associations they will be exploring how these important recommendations for public health workforce can be implemented over the next two years. For further information please contact John Middleton via the GNAPH secretariat, Rebecca Fournier: rfournier@aspph.org