Authors: Barbara Deller, Vandana Tripathi, Stacie Stender, Emmanuel Otolorin, Peter Johnson, Catherine Carr
The dramatic shortage of skilled providers creates challenges to the provision of both facility- and community-based healthcare services, including services for maternal and newborn health (MNH). Task shifting has been promoted as one response to this global health worker crisis, shifting tasks to one provider cadre and from another.
The emerging global literature, as well as Jhpiego’s field experiences, supports the importance of addressing several key components that facilitate effective task shifting in maternal and newborn health care. These components include: (1) policy and regulatory support; (2) definition of roles, functions, and limitations; (3) determination of requisite skills and qualifications; (4) education and training; and (5) service delivery support, including management and supervision, incentives and/or remuneration, material support (e.g. commodities), and referral systems.
The present paper reviews Jhpiego’s experiences in the use of task shifting as a strategy for increasing the scope and breadth of its MNH programming in over a dozen countries around the world. These experiences were chosen to illustrate both types of task shifting and to closely examine the processes and key components underlying the task-shifting approach that maximize the potential of available human resources.
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Resource Topic: CHW Role, Community Health Workers/Volunteers, Human Resources Management/Workforce Development, Maternal, Newborn and Child Health, Policy, Task shifting, Training
Resource Type: Journal articles
Year: 2015
Region:
Country: Global
Publisher May Restrict Access: No