March 1, 2019 - The Pan American Organization organized a workshop on “Strengthening Human Resources for Health (HRH) Planning for the implementation of Belize's HRH Strategic Plan”, which took place in Belize, from 26 to 28 February 2019.
The goal of the initiative was to enhance the capacity of participants to develop effective health workforce strategies and interventions.
In her opening remarks, Dr. Noreen Jack, PWR of Belize pointed out that, "investing in competent and appropriately-trained and adequate health workforce will guarantee Belize’s attainment of universal health while also contributing to its development." She continued, “This people-centered paradigm focusses on creating a workforce that serves the current health needs by anticipating the changing needs of the community.”
Fernando Menezes, Chief of the Human Resources for Health Unit at PAHO echoed her sentiments, “There is a need to build skills in understanding complex health systems and developing effective health workforce strategies and interventions. This workshop provided an opportunity for participants to learn new skills, with a particular focus on thinking and acting differently.”
Dr Marvin Manzanero, Director of Health Services of the Ministry of Health in Belize, highlighted several human resource challenges in the health sector and outlined specific steps that the government is undertaking to address them, including the development of the recently launched Strategic Plan on Human Resources for Universal Health 2019-2024, which was a product of intersectoral collaboration and cooperation.
Attendees included decision-makers and project managers involved in HRH from the Ministry of Health of Belize (MOH), Ministry of Public Service, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Finance, Foreign Affairs, academia and other related sectors.
The focus of the workshop was to support the Belize strategic plan on HRH by helping participants to better understand their system and the opportunities and risks of the future.
During the workshop, participants were able to understand the methods of systems thinking, categorize the stakeholders in the system, create challenging scenarios, and quantify the risks and opportunities of the future.
“They had the opportunity to use systems thinking to explore a health problem, create scenarios for the whole health system, and use these to prioritize where to focus activity so that health resources can be used most effectively,” said workshop facilitator Graham Willis, PAHO international consultant on Human Resources for Health and former lead of Workforce Analysis at the Department of Health-England.
At the end of the workshop, the participants came up with specific steps of a road map that will allow for effective and efficient implementation of the national HRH Strategic Plan, including identifying innovations in resource mobilization and targeted communication strategies that would promote further investments in the health workforce towards achieving universal health, among others.
The initiative was part of PAHO’s support to strengthen the MOH’s management capacity to develop HRH policies and plans that define the strategic direction and integration of HRH into other sectors.
The workshop was organized by the Human Resources for Health Unit of the Department of Health Systems and Services in collaboration with the PAHO/Belize country office and responded to the Plan of Action on Human Resources for Universal Health 2018-2023 agreed by health authorities from the Americas at the PAHO 56 Directing Council.
