Lecture B1: Forecasting Health Workforce Need and Supply (Hall) 8:00-10:00 [PPT]

Objectives:

Describe the major sources of workforce supply data, their limitations, and ways of improving data accuracy

List and describe three ways of projecting supply (cohort, stock-and-flow, trendline), their key data requirements, and describe their relative merits

List and describe four main ‘generic’ methods of projecting requirements (ratio, need, demand, targets) and the situations in which each is most useful, or not indicated

Describe how modeling and simulation can be used to compare alternative scenarios, test for data sensitivity, dialogue with various HRH stakeholders, and assess the merits of alternative workforce policies

Readings:

World Health Organization, “Models and Tools for Health Workforce Planning and Projections,” Human Resources for Health Observer 3; 2010

Lecture B2: Needs-based Model and Wage Bill Need Under Various Skill Mixes (Scheffler/Fulton) 10:30-12:00 [PPT]

Objectives:

Forecast workforce shortages and surpluses

- Estimate need using utilization measures and different covariates

- Estimate economic demand

- Forecast supply using a trendline

Estimate scaling-up costs

- Wage bill

- Training

- Non-wage bill

Illustrate workforce and wage bill shortages under different skill mixes

Readings:

Scheffler RM, Liu JX, Kinfu Y, Dal Poz MR, “Forecasting the Global Shortage of Physicians: An Economic- and Needs-Based Approach,” Bulletin of the World Health Organization 86(7); 2008: 516-523.

Scheffler RM, Fulton BD "Needs-Based Health Workforce Analysis: Methods and Empirical Estimates in Selected African Countries," book chapter for Scheffler RM, Soucat ALB (eds.) Human Resources in Health in Africa: A New Look at the Crisis, Washington D.C.: The World Bank (forthcoming).

Additional reference material:

World Health Organization, Working Together for Health: The World Health Report 2006, Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization; 2006.

Scheffler RM, Mahoney CB, Fulton BD, Dal Poz MR, Preker AS, “Estimates of Health Care Professional Shortages in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2015," Health Affairs 28; 2009: w849-w862.

Scheffler RM, Is There a Doctor in the House? Market Signals and Tomorrow’s Supply of Doctors, Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2008, Chapter 6, Appendix A, Appendix B.

Fulton, Brent D. and Richard M. Scheffler (2010), “Health Care Professional Shortages and Skill-Mix Options Using Community Health Workers: New Estimates for 2015,” forthcoming chapter in a book being published from papers selected from The Performance of National Health Workforce Conference, sponsored by World Health Organization, Neuchatel, Switzerland, October 2009.

Lecture B3: WHO Mental Health Workforce Case Study (Bruckner) 3:00-4:30 [PPT]

Objectives:

To determine mental health treatment needs using epidemiological data

To translate treatment needs into workforce requirements

To use needs-based analysis to estimate mental health workforce shortages

Readings:

Scheffler RM, Saxena S, Bruckner TA, Yoon J, Shen G, Morris J, Fulton BD, Human Resources for Mental Health: Workforce Shortages in Lower and Middle Income Countries, Berkeley, Calif: The Global Center for Health Economics and Policy Research (working paper).