This article describes an initiative to develop and implement a competency-based credentialing program for public health managers and administrators that is linked with practice performance standards for local public health systems. The Illinois Public Health Administration Certification Board represents an innovative model for credentialing public health workers, placing equal value on compete...

Health authorities in developing countries must often cope with rapid changes in the administrative, policy and socioeconomic contexts in which they work. Changes in this external environment have important implications for the roles that health planners can effectively play and the leverage they exercise throughout the system. This paper examines the challenges associated with reorienting mini...

INTRODUCTION Responsible governance is crucial to national development and a catalyst for achieving the Millennium Development Goals. To date, governance seems to have been a neglected issue in the field of human resources for health (HRH), which could be an important reason why HRH policy formulation and implementation is often poor. This article aims to describe how governance issues have inf...

Non-profit academic project, developed under the open access initiative

As the supply of physicians grew during the 1970s, medical and surgical specialists diffused into smaller communities. In 1979, nearly every town with a population of more than 2,500 had ready access to a physician. The overall pattern of physician distribution was quite similar in the four disparate geographic regions chosen for study. The data strongly suggest that competitive forces play a m...

As part of the special feature on leadership and human resources (HR), Management Sciences for Health profiles three leaders who have made a significance difference in the HR situation in their countries. By taking a comprehensive approach and working in partnership with stakeholders, these leaders demonstrate that strengthening health workforce planning, management, and training can have a pos...

Changes to the remuneration of medical practitioners are currently being considered in Australia. In this paper, we provide a discussion of financial incentives in healthcare markets and their effects on health professionals' behaviour. After defining incentives, the paper focuses on the design of incentive schemes for the health workforce. It discusses several issues that should be considered ...

Many countries are using the strategy of international recruitment to make up for shortages of health professionals to the detriment of health systems in the poorest parts of the world. This study reviewed the potential impact of eight national level and international codes of practice or similar instruments that are being introduced to encourage ethical recruitment in order to protect these co...