Building a Workforce for Future Health Systems: Reflections from Health Policy and Systems Research

Abstract

Creative approaches in training, financing, developing, and leading the diverse workforce required to strengthen health systems can pave the way for its full-time and part-time members to work together.

Development of the Rehabilitation Health Policy, Systems, and Services Research Field: Quantitative Analyses of Publications over Time (1990–2017) and across Country Type

“…While we found a significant growing trend in the portion of the country-specific Rehabilitation HPSSR publications that were focused on LMICs(up to 13% in 2017),a still higher preponderance of rehabilitation HPSSR is likely needed, especially in LMICs; transformational rather than incremental improvements would be required to address this gap. Capacity would need to be created, for example, in developing a research workforce with the means, focus, and capabilities to implement a Rehabilitation HPSSR agenda worldwide [10,22,[67][68][69], including with a special focus on LMICs [70][71][72].…”

“…Moreover, we did not analyze the specific scope of Rehabilitation HPSSR by thematic areas [21,44], but solely the whole of these research publications. Similarly, we did not analyze publications from the field of health policy and systems research separately from those in the field of health services research, as both broadly aim to address issues of healthcare access, quality, and value at the population level [16,19,22], thereby it would be complex to select MeSH terms clearly relevant for one but clearly not relevant for the other. Furthermore, we analyzed rates of funding support that research publications declared, not funding support amounts [45].…”

“…Health policy and systems research address any, and often multiple, 'building blocks' of health systems (e.g., governance, workforce, financing), within a systems-thinking approach toward promoting the coverage, quality, efficiency and equity of health systems [15,[18][19][20][21]. At the service-delivery level, and with increasing convergence with a broader health systems research [16,19,22], health services research refers to a multidisciplinary field of investigation on how social factors, financing, organizations, technologies, innovation, and personal behaviors affect the access to healthcare, its quality, and its cost [23,24]. Taken together, HPSSR addresses aspects within or at the interface of health policy, of health system's organization, and of healthcare delivery -for improved healthcare access, healthcare value, and population health.…”

Training for Health System Improvement: Emerging Lessons from Canadian and US Approaches to Embedded Fellowships

“…Both the American and the Canadian fellowship programs have spawned imitation and emulation, and these should be encouraged. In the US, the Education Council of AcademyHealth has overseen a workforce initiative that has underscored the importance of embedded experiences and the growing role of health systems in health services research (Atkins 2018;Javadi et al 2018;Menachemi et al 2018;Mor and Wallace 2018;Rich and Collins 2018). Second, several other groups have become interested in sponsoring similar, real-world learning opportunities for post-doctoral fellows.…”

Understanding the Current Health Services Research Workforce and Maximizing its Future

“…The featured papers examine (1) the current stock of health services researchers (Frogner ); (2) employment demand for health services researchers (Rich and Collins ); (3) trends in health services research funding (Simpson et al. ); (4) funding trends for the training of health services researchers (Mor and Wallace ); (4) issues and trends in the global health policy and systems research workforce (Javadi, Tran, and Ghaffar ); (6) updates to the health services research doctoral core competencies (Burgess, Menachemi, and Maciejewski ); (7) updates to the Canadian health services and policy research core competencies (Bornstein et al. ); and (8) recommendations for supporting the growth and evolution of the health services research workforce.…”