Best Investment for a Healthier World

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Our 2030 Vision for the Health Workforce

A young lab technician prepares samples for testing at the Bwaila Hospital in Lilongwe, Malawi. Her presence symbolizes the community’s access to health services both now and for the future. Photo credit: Kevin Gandhi/Chemonics, 2017

A young lab technician prepares samples for testing at the Bwaila Hospital in Lilongwe, Malawi. Her presence symbolizes the community’s access to health services both now and for the future. Photo credit: Kevin Gandhi/Chemonics, 2017

By Rachel Deussom, HRH2030 Program / Chemonics International

Teenager Durah stretches under a lamp with a book, absorbing every word and figure. Inspired by her aunt, she wants to become a nurse. She is the future health workforce. She is who the world needs tomorrow.

Durah wants flexibility, occupational safety, and career opportunities. Responding to her community’s health needs and workplace effectiveness will contribute to her job satisfaction. As a global community, it is our responsibility to make sure this future health worker — and many others — achieves her highest potential.

To build the future health workforce, we can empower aspiring health professionals — especially youth like Durah — to excel at jobs that can help meet health system needs. We must:

In Durah’s village, a nurse-midwife unlocks the gate at the primary health center as the sun rises. A community health worker sets off on his bicycle to visit families in a small village tucked in the hills. A pharmacist turns the sign in her clinic’s window to display “open”. Their presence symbolizes their community’s access to health services. They, and those like them, are our current health workforce. They are who the world needs today.

The midwife has delivered hundreds of babies safely and helped families plan for their prosperous futures, but she needs the latest tools and skills to remain effective. The community health worker is motivated to serve remote communities, including for malaria and patients lost to follow-up, but he needs support to track reported cases and collect data. The pharmacist prescribes drugs so that people living with HIV can live normal, productive lives, but her practice depends on a well managed central medical store.

They must be well deployed, well supported, and motivated to provide relevant and respectful services that meet standards of care. Investing in health workers helps them enhance communities’ prosperity, save lives, and make the world a safer place.

To optimize the existing workforce, we can work with country stakeholders to harness education, labor markets, and health systems to fully support today’s health workforce to be fit-for-purpose and fit-to-practice. We must:

The USAID HRH2030 program celebrates current and future health workers this World Health Worker Week. Now is the opportunity to make strategic health workforce investments. We cannot achieve better health without them.