#hrh — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #hrh, aggregated by home.social.
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The global health community has long grappled with the challenge of providing effective, scalable training to health workers, particularly in resource-constrained settings.
In recent years, digital learning platforms have emerged as a potential solution, promising to deliver accessible, engaging, and impactful training at scale.
Imagine a digital platform intended to train health workers at scale.
Their theory of change rests on a few key assumptions:
- Offering simplified, mobile-friendly courses will make training more accessible to health workers.
- Incorporating videos and case studies will keep learners engaged.
- Quizzes and knowledge checks will ensure learning happens.
- Certificates, continuing education credits, and small incentives will motivate course completion.
- Growing the user base through marketing and partnerships is the path to impact.
On the surface, this seems sensible.
Mobile optimization recognizes health workers’ technological realities.
Multimedia content seems more engaging than pure text.
Assessments appear to verify learning.
Incentives promise to drive uptake.
Scale feels synonymous with success.
While well-intentioned, such a platform risks falling into the trap of a behaviorist learning agenda.
This is an approach that, despite its prevalence, is a pedagogical dead-end with limited potential for driving meaningful, sustained improvements in health worker performance and health outcomes.
It is a paradigm that views learners as passive recipients of information, where exposure equals knowledge acquisition.
It is a model that privileges standardization over personalization, content consumption over knowledge creation, and extrinsic rewards over intrinsic motivation.
It fails to account for the rich diversity of prior experiences, contexts, and challenges that health workers bring to their learning.
Most critically, it neglects the higher-order skills – the critical thinking, the adaptive expertise, the self-directed learning capacity – that are most predictive of real-world performance.
Clicking through screens of information about neonatal care, for example, is not the same as developing the situational judgment to adapt guidelines to a complex clinical scenario, nor the reflective practice to continuously improve.
Moreover, the metrics typically prioritized by behaviorist platforms – user registrations, course completions, assessment scores – are often vanity metrics.
They create an illusion of progress while obscuring the metrics that truly matter: behavior change, performance improvement, and health outcomes.
A health worker may complete a generic course on neonatal care, for example, but this does not necessarily translate into the situational judgment to adapt guidelines to complex clinical scenarios, nor the reflective practice to continuously improve.
The behaviorist paradigm’s emphasis on information transmission and standardized content may stem from an implicit assumption that health workers at the community level do not require higher-order critical thinking skills – that they simply need a predetermined set of knowledge and procedures.
This view is not only paternalistic and insulting, but it is also fundamentally misguided.
A robust body of scientific evidence on learning culture and performance demonstrates that the most effective organizations are those that foster continuous learning, critical reflection, and adaptive problem-solving at all levels.
Health workers at the frontlines face complex, unpredictable challenges that demand situational judgment, creative thinking, and the ability to learn from experience.
Failing to cultivate these capacities not only underestimates the potential of these health workers, but it also constrains the performance and resilience of health systems as a whole.
Even if such a platform achieves its growth targets, it is unlikely to realize its impact goals.
Health workers may dutifully click through courses, but genuine transformative learning remains elusive.
The alternative lies in a learning agenda grounded in advances of the last three decades learning science.
These advances remain largely unknown or ignored in global health.
This approach positions health workers as active, knowledgeable agents, rich in experience and expertise.
It designs learning experiences not merely to transmit information, but to foster critical reflection, dialogue, and problem-solving.
It replaces generic content with authentic, context-specific challenges, and isolated study with collaborative sense-making in peer networks.
It recognizes intrinsic motivation – the desire to grow, to serve, to make a difference – as the most potent driver of learning.
Here, success is measured not in superficial metrics, but in meaningful outcomes: capacity to lead change in facilities and communities that leads to tangible improvements in the quality of care.
Global health leaders faces a choice: to settle for the illusion of progress, or to invest in the deep, difficult work of authentic learning and systemic change, commensurate with the complexity and urgency of the task at hand.
Image: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2024
https://redasadki.me/2024/06/30/learn-health-but-beware-of-the-behaviorist-trap/
#behaviorism #eLearning #healthTraining #HealthLearn #HRH #HumanResourcesForHealth #learningCulture #learningStrategy #workforceDevelopment
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The severe global shortage of health and care workers poses a dangerous threat to health systems, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The authors of the article “Prioritising the health and care workforce shortage: protect, invest, together”, including six health ministers and the WHO Director-General, assert that this workforce crisis requires urgent action and propose “protect, invest, together” to tackle it.
Deep protection of the existing workforce, they assert, is needed through improved working conditions, fair compensation, upholding rights, addressing discrimination and violence, closing gender inequities, and implementing the WHO Global Health and Care Worker Compact to ensure dignified working environments. All countries must prioritize retaining workers to build resilient health systems.
Significantly increased and strategic long-term investments are imperative in both training new health workers through educational channels and sustaining their employment. Countries should designate workforce development, especially at the primary care level, as crucial human capital investments impacting population health outcomes. Intersectoral financing is key, bringing together domestic funds, grants, concessional sources, and private sector partners into coordinated national plans. Global solidarity is required to resource-constrained LMIC health workforces.
Intersectoral collaboration between ministries of health, finance, economic development, education and employment can develop integrated health workforce strategies. South-South partnerships offer pathways for health worker training and mobility to address regional shortages. Small island nations confront severe but overlooked workforce obstacles requiring specially tailored policy approaches.
The severe projected health workforce shortfall urgently necessitates that actors globally protect existing health workers, strategically invest in growing national workforces, and unite intersectorally behind robust health employment systems, especially in lower resourced contexts. As the authors emphasize, “there can be no health, health systems, or emergency response without the health and care workforce.”
What about the role of education?
This article does not provide much direct discussion of health education systems related to the global health workforce shortage. However, it makes the following relevant points:
- Chronic underinvestment in the health and care workforce, including in education and training, has contributed to long-standing shortages.
- There is a need for strategic investments in health and care worker education and lifelong learning, with a focus on primary health care, to help address shortages.
- Investments in standalone health infrastructure will have little effect unless matched by investments in developing the health workforce through education and training.
- Increasing, smarter and sustained long-term financing is crucial for health and care worker education and employment.
- Regional and subregional collaboration should be explored to bring together resources and capacities for health workforce education and training.
- Intersectoral collaboration between health, education, finance and other sectors is important for developing policies and making investments in health workforce education.
Read more to understand what this means for health education: Protect, invest, together: strengthening health workforce through new learning models
Reference: Agyeman-Manu et al. Prioritising the health and care workforce shortage: protect, invest, together. The Lancet Global Health (2023). https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(23)00224-3
Illustration: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2024
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Who'd want to be king Charles' surgeon or anaesthetist.
#nopressure 😆
#KingCharles #HRH -
The Geneva Learning Foundation’s Charlotte Mbuh spoke today at the COP28 Health Pavilion in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE). Learn more…
Good afternoon. I am Charlotte Mbuh. I have worked for the health of children and families in Cameroon for over 15 years.
I am one of more than 5,500 health workers from 68 countries who have connected to share our observations of how climate is affecting the health of those we serve.
“Going back home to the community where I grew up as a child, I was shocked to see that most of the rivers we used to swim and fish in have all dried up, and those that are still there have become very shallow so that you can easily walk through a river you required a boat to cross in years past.”
These are the words of Samuel Chukwuemeka Obasi, a health worker from Nigeria.
Dr Kumbha Gopi, a health worker from India said: “The use of motor vehicles has led to an increase in air pollution and we see respiratory problems and skin diseases”.
Climate change is hurting the health of those we serve. And it is getting worse.
Few here would deny that health workers are an essential voice to listen to in order to understand climate impacts on health.
Yet, a man named Jacob on social media snapped: “Since when are health workers the authority on air pollution?”
Here are the words of Bie Lilian Mbando, a health worker from my country: “Where I live in Buea, the flood from Mount Cameroon took away all belongings of people in my neighborhood and killed a secondary school student who was playing football with his friends.”
Climate change is killing communities.
Cecilia Nabwirwa, a nurse in Nairobi, Kenya: “I remember my grand-son getting sick after eating vegetables grown along areas flooded by sewage. Since then I resolved to growing my own vegetables to ensure healthy eating.”
And yet, another man on social media, Robert, found this “ridiculous. As if my friend who sells fish at his fish stall comes as an expert on water quality.”
I wondered: why such brutal responses?
Well, unlike scientists or global agencies, we cannot be dismissed as “experts from on-high”.
What we know, we know because we are here every day.
We are part of the community.
And we know that climate change is a threat to the health of the communities we serve.
We are already having to manage the impacts of climate change on health.
We are doing the best that we can.
But we need your support.
The global community is investing in building a new scientific field around climate and health.
Massive investments are also being made in policy.
Are we making a commensurate investment in people and communities?
That should mean investing in health workers.
What will happen if this investment is neglected?
What if big global donors say: “it’s important, but it’s not part of our strategy?”
Well, in 5, 10, or 15 years, we will certainly have much improved science and, hopefully, policy.
Yet, some communities might reject better science and policy.
Will the global community then wonder: “Why don’t they know what’s good for them?”
I am an immunization worker. For over 15 years, I have worked for my country’s ministry of health.
Like my colleagues from all over the world, I know more than a little about what it takes to establish and maintain trust.
Trust in vaccination, trust in public health.
Trust that by standing together in the face of critical threats to our societies, we all stand to do better.
Local communities in the poorest countries are already bearing the brunt of climate change effects on health.
Local solutions are needed.
Health workers are trusted advisors to the communities we serve.
With every challenge, there is an opportunity.
On 28 July 2023, 4,700 health workers began learning from each other through the Geneva Learning Foundation’s platform, community, and network.
Thousands more are connecting with each other, because they choose to.
And because they want to take action.
It is our duty to support them.
In March 2024, we will hold the tenth Teach to Reach conference.
The last edition reached over 17,000 health workers from more than 80 countries.
This time, our focus will be on climate and health.
We invite global partners to join, to listen and to learn.
We invite you to consider how you, your organization, your government might support action by health workers on the frontline.
Because we will rise.
As health workers, with or without your support, we will continue to stand up with courage, compassion and commitment, working to lift up our communities.
Our perseverance calls us all to press forward towards climate justice and health equity.
I wish to challenge us, as a global community, to rise together, so that the voices of those on the frontline of climate change will be at the next Conference of Parties.
By standing together, we all stand to do better.
Thank you.
https://redasadki.me/2023/12/11/climate-and-health-health-workers-trust/
#CharlotteMbuh #climate #climateCrisis #COP28 #Dubai #health #healthWorkforce #HRH
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Samuel Chukwuemeka Obasi, a health professional from Nigeria:
“Going back home to the community where I grew up as a child, I was shocked to see that most of the rivers we used to swim and fish in have all dried up, and those that are still there have become very shallow so that you can easily walk through a river you required a boat to cross in years past.”
In July 2023, more than 1200 health workers from 68 countries shared their experiences of changes in climate and health, at a unique event designed to shed light on the realities of climate impacts on the health of the communities they serve.
Before, during and after COP28, we are sharing health workers’ observations and insights.
Follow The Geneva Learning Foundation to learn how climate change is affecting health in multiple ways:
- How extreme weather events can lead to tragic loss of life.
- How changing weather patterns are leading to crop failures and malnutrition, and forcing people to abandon their homes.
- How infectious diseases are surging as mosquitoes proliferate and water sources are contaminated.
- How climate stresses are particularly problematic for those with existing health conditions, like cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
- How climate impacts are having a devastating effect on mental health as people’s ways of life are destroyed.
- How climate change is changing the very fabric of society, driving displacement and social hardship that undermines health and wellbeing.
- How a volatile climate is disrupting the delivery of essential health services and people’s ability to access them.
- We will finish the series with inspiring stories of how health workers are already responding to such challenges, working with communities to counter the effects of a changing climate.
On 1 December 2023, TGLF will be publishing a compendium and analysis of these 1200 contributions – On the frontline of climate change and health: A health worker eyewitness report. Get the report…
This landmark report – a global first – kickstarts our campaign to ensure that health workers in the Global South are recognized as:
- The people already having to manage the impacts of climate change on health.
- An essential voice to listen to in order to understand climate impacts on health.
- A potentially critical group to work with to protect the health of communities in the face of a changing climate.
Before, during, and after COP28, we are advocating for the recognition and support of health workers as trusted advisers to communities bearing the brunt of climate change effects on health.
#climate #climateChange #communities #COP28 #health #healthWorkers #HRH #leadership
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The paper by Tom Newton-Lewis et al. sets out a conceptual framework that identifies the factors that determine the appropriate balance between directive and enabling approaches to performance management in a given context. #HRH #PerformanceManagement #LMICs #complex #adaptive https://t.co/UULsGRZ2W5
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We need a conceptual framework that situates health performance management within complex adaptive systems. #HRH #PerformanceManagement #LMICs #complex #adaptive
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Health systems are complex and adaptive: performance outcomes arise from interactions between many interconnected system actors and their ability to adapt to pressures for change.
#HRH #PerformanceManagement #LMICs #complex #adaptive #GlobalHealth -
Existing performance management approaches in many low- and middle-income country health systems are largely directive, aiming to control behaviour using targets, performance monitoring, incentives, and answerability to hierarchies.
#HRH #LMICs #complex #adaptive #GlobalHealth -
While I doubt King Charles is actually a pagan, it _is_ entertaining that his inclusion of a blatantly pagan symbol is stirring up so much controversy.
https://www.themonastery.org/blog/pagan-symbol-in-king-charles-coronation-invitation
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Henriëtte Roland Holst is in 1952 overleden, daarom is haar werk per 1 januari van dit jaar publiek domein geworden. #Biograaf Elsbeth Etty hield een mooi verhaal over haar leven en werk op de jaarlijkse #publiekdomeindag in de #koninklijkebibliotheek. Etty zag tot haar genoegen dat een jonge generatie zich voor het werk van #HRH gaat interesseren. #elsbethettty #publiekdomein #auteursrechtenvrij
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Siiri Nordin + Houseband. Live music. #SundayNightMusicClub #HRH #Roihuvuori #Helsinki
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Siiri Nordin + Houseband. Live music. #SundayNightMusicClub #HRH #Roihuvuori #Helsinki
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Houseband. Live music. #SundayNightMusicClub #HRH #Roihuvuori #Helsinki
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Live music each sunday in my local pub. #SundayNightMusicClub #HRH #Roihuvuori #Helsinki
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Nearly 89K at one point following this flight for some reason #HRH https://www.flightradar24.com/KRH20R/2d65bac1