Why do health labour market forces matter? | WHO

Human resources for health have been recognized as essential to the development of responsive and effective health systems. 

Low- and middle-income countries seeking to achieve universal health coverage face human resource constraints that seriously undermine their ability to achieve well-functioning health systems. 

Traditional approaches to addressing human resource constraints have focused on workforce planning: estimating health workforce requirements based on a country’s epidemiological and demographic profile and scaling up education and training capacities to narrow the gap between the “needed” number of health workers and the existing number. However, this approach neglects other important factors that influence human resource capacity, including labour market dynamics and the behavioural responses and preferences of the health workers themselves. 

This paper describes how labour market analysis can contribute to a better understanding of the factors behind human resource constraints in the health sector and to a more effective design of policies and interventions to address them.