Integration of Frontline Health Workforce Will Determine Success of SDGs, Universal Health Coverage in 2018 and Beyond

January 08, 2018What will it take to offer true  patient-centered care?As 2018 begins with the clock already ticking on the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal  (SDG) targets, the heroic, sometimes harrowing, and heartwarming stories of six frontline health workers from four continents delivered on a crisp November evening in Dublin reflect both the promise and the tangled reality of the policy planning and program implementation needed to fulfill the promise of unprecedented global consensus on health and development.What I hope stuck in the minds of thousands of the top global health experts that had gathered in Dublin for the  Fourth Global Forum on Human Resources for Health was not the geographic diversity of these health workers’ stories, but rather their diversity of skills.Intuitive though it may seem, ensuring access to a proper skill mix —represented in part by Mexican- American community health worker Maria Valenzuela,  Liberian nurse Miatta Gbanya,  Zambian nurse-midwife Marjorie Makukula,  South African paramedic Rushaana Gallow,  Burmese community doctor Hay Mar Khine, and  Irish cardiac physiologist Paul Nolan at the “Lives in Their Hands” storytelling night in Dublin—is a complex yet fundamental equation for global health policy leaders to solve in 2018 and beyond. How do you move from policy to implementation to deliver “truly patient-centered” care?How well this question —posed at a side session in Dublin led by Medtronic Foundat...

Source: IntraHealth International - January 8, 2018 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: mnathe Source Type: news