Human resources for health

Text by Marjolein Dieleman
Development, Policy and Practice (DEV), Royal Tropical Institute

KIT has a wealth of experience in strategic planning and policy development in the area of healthcare workers in developing countries. This is based on years of applied research in Africa, Asia and Latin America with local partners. The Institute develops practical policy tools and helps both the government and the private sector to implement and assess human resource management. It also has a lot of experience with bringing important players on board such as ministries, civil society organisations and professional bodies associated with the medical profession. The Institute provides support and training to healthcare managers at both the national and regional level in the area of formulating and implementing human resource management. KIT also gives advice to various training institutes in developing countries.

Approach of KIT to HRH issues

KIT addresses Human Resources for Health issues internationally and at country level through policy advice and research, as well as capacity building, using a systems perspective.
KIT believes that HRH can only be appropriately addressed if the context within which health workers operate is taken into consideration. Our working principles are therefore to address HRH issues brought up by our southern partners in a multidisciplinary way, working with partners from the South and building on current experiences in the field. Our approach is rights-based, and gender and equity sensitive. We work in a participatory way, involving stakeholders within and beyond the health sector, and linking policy level with the operational level. We work especially to improve pro-poor services and therefore we focus on poverty pockets and fragile states. HIV/AIDS is considered as a specific factor in HRH issues. We assure that experiences in country support and research results are documented and shared.

Focal points

Building evidence for human resources for health

Developing policies and strategies for appropriate deployment and retention of staff, including managing exit from workforce

Research on equity on distribution of health workers amongst and within countries

Developing HR management systems focusing on individual countries

Advising on an appropriate skills mix

Developing strategies for stewardship in HR to enhance private-public partnership

Assisting in planning human resource strategies for change management to accompany decentralization and other reforms in the health sector

Institutional strengthening and capacity building of health institutes and individual health professionals

Facilitating social dialogue for International Migration of health workers

Team members

• Yme van den Berg
• Ankie van den Broek
• Marjolein Dieleman
• Jurriaan Toonen
• Prisca Zwanikken       

KIT Projects

• Towards evidence-based policy options in child survival planning: estimation of human resource requirements
• Workload indicators of staffing needs
• Health systems planning and human resource development in Bangladesh
• Strengthening the capacity of primary health care in Vietnam
• Capacity building for qualitative research in the health sector Vietnam
• Human resource development support to national tuberculosis control programme, Egypt
• Human resources development and tuberculosis control in Cambodia
• Replicability of service delivery modalities used for the eradication of poliomyelitis
• Training on human resources development in tuberculosis
• Strengthening human resource development for sexual and reproductive health

Publications

• Adjei, S. - Quest for quality
• Dieleman, M. - Human resource management interventions to improve health workers' performance in low and middle income countries: a realist review
• Dieleman, M. - 'I believe that the staff have reduced their closeness to patients'
• Dieleman, M. - Identifying factors for job motivation of rural health workers in North Viet Nam
• Dieleman, M. - Improving health worker performance: in search of promising practices
• Dieleman, M. - The match between motivation and performance management of health sector workers in Mali
• Dieleman, M. - Triggering meaningful change
• Dieleman, M. - 'We are also dying like any other people, we are also people’: perceptions of the impact of HIV/AIDS on health workers in two districts in Zambia
• Elzinga, G. - Workers for priorities in health
• Joint Learning Initiative, - Specific programs and human resources: addressing a key implementation constraint
• Lehmann, U. - Staffing remote rural areas in middle- and low-income countries
• Rutten, M. - A comparative analysis of some policy options to reduce rationing in the UK's NHS
• Rutten, M. - The economic impact of medical migration: a receiving country's perspective
• Rutten, M. - The economic impact of medical migration: an overview of the literature