Italy’s Instituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS) hosted the third WHO Public Health and Emergency Workforce Roadmap Steering Committee meeting from 6-7 July in Rome. The Committee considered and endorsed new guidance and tools for countries.
Since the launch of the Roadmap one year ago, experts have built a suite of practical resources that will be used to support countries to strengthen the alignment and capacity of their workforces to provide health, including emergency response. The Roadmap is composed of three action areas: defining essential public health functions, strengthening competency-based education and mapping of measurement of occupations.
While each country’s health sector is unique, the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated not only that no country was fully prepared, but that each must invest in a national workforce to promote health, treat illness, and respond to emergencies. To guide strategy and investment, countries must understand and define people’s health needs, design and deliver education that equips health workers with the knowledge and skills to meet the essential health needs, and understand the composition of their health workforces to address gaps and shortages.
Already, pilots have been undertaken in seven countries, with another 30 countries ready to begin the process of country adaptation, contextualization, and workforce benchmarking. Roadmap partners have committed to support at least 100 countries in the next year to apply the tools, adapt to national context and benchmark themselves.
“We are at the halfway point of the Sustainable Development Goals, and we must restore progress not only for SDG3 on Health but also the SDGs focused on jobs, economies and equity,” said Jim Campbell, Director, WHO Health Workforce department. “The Roadmap partners are present in over 120 countries, and they are ready to support ministries of health and their stakeholders to ensure that we protect and invest together in the workforce needed to improve health and be more prepared for future emergencies.”
The Roadmap stems from the 2021 Declaration of the G-20 Health Ministers, under the Italian G-20 presidency, which recognized the "importance of investing in and protecting an adequate and well-trained health workforce and community-based health services…to meet needs in the face of health risks and emergencies as well as insufficient human resource capacity at national and local levels."
The political and technical consensus generated by Italy’s G20 Presidency continues to provide the foundation for WHO and the partnership of associations, institutions and schools of public health – as represented by their national, regional and international bodies - to align contributions for a multi-disciplinary workforce to undertake the essential public health functions, including emergency, preparedness and response efforts.
“It’s been an honor for our institute to host this fundamental event,” noted Silvio Brusaferro, ISS President. “We are committed to give our contribution to the next steps of the Roadmap sharing our knowledge and our past experiences to contribute to build a health workforce ready to face the future challenges all over the world”.