Strengthening the health workforce to implement public health interventions in the South-Eastern European Health Network: lessons learned from a technical meeting

Through the WHO European Region’s Health 2020 policy
framework, countries agreed to work together on policy priorities
for public health such as strengthening people-centred public
health systems and public health capacity. Alongside the
Health 2020 strategy, the seventh of the 10 essential public health
operations devised by the WHO Regional Office for Europe focuses
on assuring a sufficient and competent public health workforce.
The Regional Office has supported the health activities of the
South-Eastern European Health Network through a series of
technical meetings on the health workforce since 2011. This
article reports the results of SEEHN technical meeting on human
resources for public health, organized by the WHO Regional
Office for Europe, and analyses these results in the context
of universal health coverage. During the meeting, through
a series of interactive activities, participants shared details of
eight successful public health interventions and discussed and
analysed strategies addressing human resources for health
to improve the public health workforce. The public health
interventions matched the specific national burden of disease and
especially the national health policy priorities. In most cases they
involved a multisectoral approach, and all interventions included
multidisciplinary teams. The interventions mainly addressed
the public health workforce in terms of education; five included
training courses. Accreditation of training programmes, adjusted
job descriptions for public health specialists and advocacy to
show the importance of public health professionals were used in
the other three interventions.
It is clear that training as a strategy to improve the public health
workforce was a popular option; in most cases it was the only
strategy used. This could indicate a lack of skills and experience
on how to adapt the workforce to implement public health
interventions using a variety of strategies for human resources
for health, such as task shifting, supervision and career planning,
among others. Global and regional policies and guidelines on
human resources for health propose a variety of strategies to
build and strengthen the health workforce. Therefore, it is now
crucial to advocate strategies beyond training to continue to
support the strengthening of the public health workforce.