This paper presents a framework for the health system with health workers at the core. We review existing health-system frameworks and the role they assign to health workers. Earlier frameworks either do not include health workers as a central feature of system functioning or treat them as one...

At present, there exists no widely agreed upon set of study-design selection criteria for systematic reviews of health systems research, except for those proposed by the Cochrane Collaboration's Effective Practice and Organisation of Care (EPOC) review group (which comprises randomized...

Three causal processes have been proposed to explain associations between group income inequality and individual health outcomes, each of which implies health effects for different segments of the population. We present a novel conceptual and analytic framework for the quantitative evaluation of...

Past research on the health workforce can be structured into three perspectives - "health workforce planning" (1960 through 1970s); "the health worker as economic actor" (1980s through 1990s); and "the health worker as necessary resource" (1990s through 2000s). During the first phase, shortages...

In many geographical regions, both in developing and in developed countries, the number of health workers is insufficient to achieve population health goals. Financial incentives for return of service are intended to alleviate health worker shortages: A (future) health worker enters into a...

Without large increases in the number of health workers to treat HIV/AIDS (HAHW), most developing countries will be unable to achieve universal coverage with antiretroviral treatment (ART), leading to large numbers of potentially avoidable deaths among people living with HIV/AIDS. We use Markov...

Despite recent international efforts to increase antiretroviral treatment (ART) coverage, more than 5 million people who need ART in developing countries do not receive such treatment. Shortages of human resources to treat HIV/AIDS (referred to herein as HRHA) are one of the main constraints to...

In spite of recent large-scale efforts to roll out ART in developing countries, millions of people who need ART currently do not receive it. Without large increases in the number of health workers to treat HIV/AIDS (HAHW) in the next few years, most developing countries will be unable to achieve...

In many countries in sub-Saharan Africa health worker shortages are one of the main constraints in achieving population health goals. Financial-incentive programmes for return of service, whereby participants receive payments in return for a commitment to practice for a period of time in a...