Researchers’ Work from University of Washington Focuses on Managed Care (Measuring the Availability of Human Resources for Health and Its Relationship To Universal Health Coverage for 204 Countries and Territories From 1990 To 2019: a …): Managed Care

2022 AUG 25 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Investigators discuss new findings in Managed Care. According to news originating from Seattle, Washington, by NewsRx correspondents, research stated, “Human resources for health (HRH) include a range of occupations that aim to promote or improve human health. The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the WHO Health Workforce 2030 strategy have drawn attention to the importance of HRH for achieving policy priorities such as universal health coverage (UHC).”

Financial support for this research came from CGIAR.

Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from the University of Washington, “Although previous research has found substantial global disparities in HRH, the absence of comparable cross national estimates of existing workforces has hindered efforts to quantify workforce requirements to meet health system goals. We aimed to use comparable and standardised data sources to estimate HRH densities globally, and to examine the relationship between a subset of HRH cadres and UHC effective coverage performance. Through the International Labour Organization and Global Health Data Exchange databases, we identified 1404 country-years of data from labour force surveys and 69 country-years of census data, with detailed microdata on health-related employment. From the WHO National Health Workforce Accounts, we identified 2950 country-years of data. We mapped data from all occupational coding systems to the International Standard Classification of Occupations 1988 (ISCO-88), allowing for standardised estimation of densities for 16 categories of health workers across the full time series. Using data from 1990 to 2019 for 196 of 204 countries and territories, covering seven Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) super-regions and 21 regions, we applied spatiotemporal Gaussian process regression (ST-GPR) to model HRH densities from 1990 to 2019 for all countries and territories. We used stochastic frontier meta-regression to model the relationship between the UHC effective coverage index and densities for the four categories of health workers enumerated in SDG indicator 3.c.1 pertaining to HRH: physicians, nurses and midwives, dentistry personnel, and pharmaceutical personnel. We identified minimum workforce density thresholds required to meet a specified target of 80 out of 100 on the UHC effective coverage index, and quantified national shortages with respect to those minimum thresholds. We estimated that, in 2019, the world had 104middot0 million (95% uncertainty interval 83middot5-128middot0) health workers, including 12middot8 million (9middot7-16middot6) physicians, 29middot8 million (23middot3-37middot7) nurses and midwives, 4middot6 million (3middot6-6middot0) dentistry personnel, and 5middot2 million (4middot0-6middot7) pharmaceutical personnel. We calculated a global physician density of 16middot7 (12middot6-21middot6) per 10 000 population, and a nurse and midwife density of 38middot6 (30middot1-48middot8) per 10 000 population. We found the GBD super-regions of sub-Saharan Africa, south Asia, and north Africa and the Middle East had the lowest HRH densities. To reach 80 out of 100 on the UHC effective coverage index, we estimated that, per 10 000 population, at least 20middot7 physicians, 70middot6 nurses and midwives, 8middot2 dentistry personnel, and 9middot4 pharmaceutical personnel would be needed. In total, the 2019 national health workforces fell short of these minimum thresholds by 6middot4 million physicians, 30middot6 million nurses and midwives, 3middot3 million dentistry personnel, and 2middot9 million pharmaceutical personnel. Considerable expansion of the world’s health workforce is needed to achieve high levels of UHC effective coverage. The largest shortages are in low-income settings, highlighting the need for increased financing and coordination to train, employ, and retain human resources in the health sector.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “Actual HRH shortages might be larger than estimated because minimum thresholds for each cadre of health workers are benchmarked on health systems that most efficiently translate human resources into UHC attainment.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: Measuring the Availability of Human Resources for Health and Its Relationship To Universal Health Coverage for 204 Countries and Territories From 1990 To 2019: a Systematic Analysis for the Global Burden of Disease 2019. The Lancet, 2022;399(10341):2129-2154. The Lancet can be contacted at: Elsevier Science Inc, Ste 800, 230 Park Ave, New York, NY 10169, USA.

The news correspondents report that additional information may be obtained from Rafael Lozano, University of Washington, Institute of Health Metrics & Evaluation, Seattle, WA 98195, United States. Additional authors for this research include Caleb Mackay Salpeter Irvine, Megan Knight, Corinne Bintz, Aleksandr Y. Aravkin, Peng Zheng, Vin Gupta, Celine M. Barthelemy, Kelly Bienhoff, Xiaochen Dai, Lalit Dandona, Rakhi Dandona, William James Dangel, Nancy Fullman, Thomas Glucksman, Simon I. Hay, Kate E. LeGrand, Tomislav Mestrovic, Ali H. Mokdad, Mohsen Naghavi, David M. Pigott, Maitreyi Sahu, Caroline Stein, Theo Vos, Stephen S. Lim, Christopher J. L. Murray, Sonali Kochhar, Benjamin Ballard Massenburg, Shane Douglas Morrison, Michael R. M. Abrigo, Abdelrahman I. Abushouk, Till Winfried Barnighausen, Aziz Sheikh, Abdallah M. Samy, Oladimeji M. Adebayo, Olayinka Stephen Ilesanmi, Mayowa O. Owolabi, Gina Agarwal, Fares Alahdab, Ziyad Al-Aly, Khurshid Alam, Turki M. Alanzi, Jacqueline Elizabeth Alcalde-Rabanal, Ismael R. Campos-Nonato, Doris V. Ortega-Altamirano, Edson Servan-Mori, Vahid Alipour, Jalal Arabloo, Aziz Rezapour, Nelson Alvis-Guzman, Arianna Maever L. Amit, Veincent Christian Filipino Pepito, Catalina Liliana Andrei, Ionut Negoi, Ruxandra Irina Negoi, Tudorel Andrei, Andreea Mirica, Carl Abelardo T. Antonio, Olatunde Aremu, Martin Amogre Ayanore, Maciej Banach, Collins Chansa, Jan-Walter De Neve, Mohsen Bayati, Habib Benzian, Adam E. Berman, Ali Bijani, Mohammad Ali Jahani, Boris Bikbov, Antonio Biondi, Marco Vacante, Archith Boloor, Bhaskaran Unnikrishnan, Reinhard Busse, Shafiu Mohammed, Zahid A. Butt, Luis Alberto Camera, Pascual R. Valdez, Rosario Cardenas, Felix Carvalho, Eduarda Fernandes, Soosanna Kumary Chattu, Vijay Kumar Chattu, Dinh-Toi Chu, Sanjay Zodpey, Dharmesh Kumar Lal, Ahmad Daryani, Meghnath Dhimal, Isaac Oluwafemi Dipeolu, Shirin Djalalinia, Hoa Thi Do, Chirag P. Doshi, Leila Doshmangir, Mansour Ghafourifard, Elham Ehsani-Chimeh, Afshin Maleki, Vafa Rahimi-Movaghar, Nima Rezaei, Maha El Tantawi, Florian Fischer, Nataliya A. Foigt, Artem Alekseevich Fomenkov, Masoud Foroutan, Takeshi Fukumoto, Mohamed M. Gad, Keyghobad Ghadiri, Arash Ziapour, Ahmad Ghashghaee, Rohollah Kalhor, Houman Goudarzi, Rajat Das Gupta, Randah R. Hamadeh, Samer Hamidi, Josep Maria Haro, Edris Hasanpoor, Mohamed I. Hegazy, Behzad Heibati, Nathaniel J. Henry, Michael K. Hole, Naznin Hossain, Mowafa Househ, Mohammad-Hasan Imani-Nasab, Seyed Sina Naghibi Irvani, Sheikh Mohammed Shariful Islam, Ankur Joshi, Abhijit P. Pakhare, Gbenga A. Kayode, Nauman Khalid, Khaled Khatab, Adnan Kisa, Kewal Krishan, Barthelemy Kuate Defo, Faris Hasan Lami, Anders O. Larsson, Janet L. Leasher, Lee-Ling Lim, Narayan B. Mahotra, Azeem Majeed, Salman Rawaf, David Laith Rawaf, Narayana Manjunatha, G. K. Mini, Erkin M. Mirrakhimov, Yousef Mohammad, Duduzile Edith Ndwandwe, Dan J. Stein, Josephine W. Ngunjiri, Cuong Tat Nguyen, Yeshambel T. Nigatu, Obinna E. Onwujekwe, Nikita Otstavnov, Stanislav S. Otstavnov, Vasily Vlassov, Norberto Perico, Giuseppe Remuzzi, Hai Quang Pham, Khem Narayan Pokhrel, Navid Rabiee, Lal Rawal, Andre M. N. Renzaho, Serge Resnikoff, Jennifer Rickard, Leonardo Roever, Juan Sanabria, Milena M. Santric-Milicevic, Sivan Yegnanarayana Iyer Saraswathy, Soraya Seedat, Subramanian Senthilkumaran, Taddese Alemu Zerfu, Diego Augusto Santos Silva, Mariya Vladimirovna Titova, Stephanie M. Topp, Marcos Roberto Tovani-Palone, Saif Ullah, Tommi Juhani Vasankari, Narayanaswamy Venketasubramanian, Jamal Akeem Yearwood, Naohiro Yonemoto, Mustafa Z. Younis, Chuanhua Yu, Zhi-Jiang Zhang, Siddhesh Zadey and Sojib Bin Zaman.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736%2822%2900532-3. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

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