Global Health and Diplomacy — Summer 2015
An Enduring Commitment To Health Workers: Data For Decision-Making On The Frontlines
MICHAEL BZDAK, PhD
Executive Director, Corporate Contributions Johnson & Johnson
Health worker recruitment and training have been priorities for the global health community in recent years, but the next chapter of the story lies in harnessing the enormous potential of data to support health workers and the critical decisions they need to make.
Companies like Johnson & Johnson are working with strategic partners to identify ways to improve human resources for health through new data-driven tools. Such tools enable health workers to improve decision-making and, ultimately, improve health outcomes of the populations they serve.
For many decades, Johnson & Johnson has worked in close partnership with health care workers, and in 2010, pledged to support Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 4, 5 and 6.1 One key result of Johnson & Johnson's commitment was the training of more than 197,000 health workers, including skilled birth attendants such as midwives, who are critical players in the effort to achieve these goals.
This support goes to help expand the training of people like Elizabeth Ndunge Mphale, a Kenyan midwife. Ms. Mphale was trained by Johnson & Johnson partner AMREF Health Africa, and has now delivered more than 1,000 babies during her 33-year career. "I have passion for my work because I see life coming into this world," says Ms. Mphale. "I've worked when I'm on holiday. I've worked when I'm off duty and on public holidays because when I'm called to assist a mother, I feel that it is my duty. Midwives are very important people - their role is to save the lives of mothers and babies."
The global health community has long acknowledged that increasing the number of trained community health workers is fundamental to achieving better health outcomes, and ensuring that we support the training of more dedicated health care professionals like Ms. Mphale is essential. As we approach a new era of global goal-setting, Johnson & Johnson is working with partners to ensure that we use the data we have - and identify the data we still need- to make decisions to support and increase the effectiveness of the global health workforce.
Powerful analytics can lead to the adoption of empiricallyproven best practices to develop a health care workforce of sufficient size, distribution and expertise to adequately meet a country's changing health care needs. Such tools can help decision makers understand the state of the health workforce and inform them how changes in the population will affect future demand.
In 2013, Johnson & Johnson became the first private sector partner to join the Frontline Health Workers Coalition (FHWC), which works to build the capacity of health workers in developing countries. A 2014 FHWC report,2 supported by Johnson & Johnson, found that community health workers (CHWs) are often informally integrated into health systems without being adequately tracked.
Without knowing the number of community health workers deployed, or their geographic location, global leaders are unable to determine how community health workers are helping to fill shortages. Without a common definition and understanding of expected tasks, countries cannot determine the right mix of skills for their health workforce or how best to integrate CHWs into the health system.
Making data collection on CHWs a priority will allow these workers to be integrated into the formal health employment sector. Not only does this better equip countries to manage and deploy the health workforce, but it also attributes real value to the work of CHWs, as decision makers at the frontlines.
More than ten years ago, Johnson & Johnson partnered with UCLA to create the Management Development Institute (MDI) 3 to enhance the management skills of African healthcare leaders. Ineffective leadership and management of health systems and services is a barrier to scaling-up delivery of quality health services, a fundamental component of attaining both the MDGs and of achieving national health priorities in sub-Saharan Africa. This collaboration underscores the importance of building the capacity of local health care professionals to use data in implementing local, regional and national health priorities.
To better understand the importance of data for the future health workforce, Johnson & Johnson has engaged experts like labor economist Haig Nalbantian, a senior partner at Mercer and co-lead of its Workforce Sciences institute. Nalbantian has spent years with his team measuring the economic impact of human capital practices. He believes the lessons learned from the privates sector can be applied to the deployment of health workers in under-resourced settings. Nalbantian also contributed to the development of a new World Economic Forum-Mercer Human Capital Index which assesses the state of human capital and the ability to productively deploy it in 122 countries, representing more than 90% of the world's population.
The Human Capital Index, published in 2013, provides a ranking of the countries covered and identified, those best positioned to contribute to effective workforce development, growth potential, and economic success. It can serve as a powerful tool for decision makers in the public and private sector to identify opportunity areas for human capital development, guide investment and site-selection choices. It is our aspiration that health systems throughout the world will benefit from the expertise that Nalbantian and Mercer's Workforce Sciences team brings to labor market analyses. He is currently working with a number of our partners including FHI 360 and IntraHealth to integrate his approach to data into current and future programming.
However, the challenge is not reserved for resourcelimited settings. By 2020, the US itself will face a shortage of 800,000 nurses. Through the Campaign for Nursing's Future, a coordinated strategy to promote nursing in the United States, Johnson & Johnson is working to address this shortage. The initiative began in 2002 to reduce America's critical nursing shortage by attracting a new wave of people into the profession through recruitment, scholarships and retention efforts.
The American Academy of Colleges of Nursing credits the Campaign with attracting an additional 750,000 nurses to the profession since its inception. An article published in the New England Journal of Medicine in April 20135 cited the Campaign for Nursing's Future as one of several major factors that have boosted interest in the nursing profession since 2002.
Our company's commitment to patients has always been inextricably linked to our commitment to doctors and nurses and the health workforce. The big data revolution gives us an even greater opportunity to support health care workers in even more effective ways than before. We're proud of our legacy of work with health care workers, and we remain committed to working with partners to help more people live longer, happier and more productive lives.
REFERENCES
1. Millennium Development Goals | Johnson & Johnson, , http:// www.jnj.com/our-giving/saving-and-improving-lives/mdg (last visited Apr 24, 2015).
2. A Commitment to Community Health Workers: Improving Data for Decision Making | Frontline Health Workers Coalition, , http://frontlinehealthworkers.org/chwreport/ (last visited Apr 24, 2015).
3. UCLA/Johnson & Johnson Management Development Institute | UCLA Anderson School of Management, , http://www.anderson. ucla.edu/price/jnj/mdi (last visited Apr 24, 2015).
4. The Human Capital Report 2013 - The World Economic Forum, , http://reports.weforum.org/human-capital-index-2013/ (last visited Apr 24, 2015).
5. David I. Auerbach et al., The Nursing Workforce in an Era of Health Care Reform, 368 N. ENGL. J. MED. 1470-1472 (2013).
Executive Director, Corporate Contributions Johnson & Johnson
Health worker recruitment and training have been priorities for the global health community in recent years, but the next chapter of the story lies in harnessing the enormous potential of data to support health workers and the critical decisions they need to make.
Companies like Johnson & Johnson are working with strategic partners to identify ways to improve human resources for health through new data-driven tools. Such tools enable health workers to improve decision-making and, ultimately, improve health outcomes of the populations they serve.
For many decades, Johnson & Johnson has worked in close partnership with health care workers, and in 2010, pledged to support Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 4, 5 and 6.1 One key result of Johnson & Johnson's commitment was the training of more than 197,000 health workers, including skilled birth attendants such as midwives, who are critical players in the effort to achieve these goals.
This support goes to help expand the training of people like Elizabeth Ndunge Mphale, a Kenyan midwife. Ms. Mphale was trained by Johnson & Johnson partner AMREF Health Africa, and has now delivered more than 1,000 babies during her 33-year career. "I have passion for my work because I see life coming into this world," says Ms. Mphale. "I've worked when I'm on holiday. I've worked when I'm off duty and on public holidays because when I'm called to assist a mother, I feel that it is my duty. Midwives are very important people - their role is to save the lives of mothers and babies."
The global health community has long acknowledged that increasing the number of trained community health workers is fundamental to achieving better health outcomes, and ensuring that we support the training of more dedicated health care professionals like Ms. Mphale is essential. As we approach a new era of global goal-setting, Johnson & Johnson is working with partners to ensure that we use the data we have - and identify the data we still need- to make decisions to support and increase the effectiveness of the global health workforce.
Powerful analytics can lead to the adoption of empiricallyproven best practices to develop a health care workforce of sufficient size, distribution and expertise to adequately meet a country's changing health care needs. Such tools can help decision makers understand the state of the health workforce and inform them how changes in the population will affect future demand.
In 2013, Johnson & Johnson became the first private sector partner to join the Frontline Health Workers Coalition (FHWC), which works to build the capacity of health workers in developing countries. A 2014 FHWC report,2 supported by Johnson & Johnson, found that community health workers (CHWs) are often informally integrated into health systems without being adequately tracked.
Without knowing the number of community health workers deployed, or their geographic location, global leaders are unable to determine how community health workers are helping to fill shortages. Without a common definition and understanding of expected tasks, countries cannot determine the right mix of skills for their health workforce or how best to integrate CHWs into the health system.
Making data collection on CHWs a priority will allow these workers to be integrated into the formal health employment sector. Not only does this better equip countries to manage and deploy the health workforce, but it also attributes real value to the work of CHWs, as decision makers at the frontlines.
More than ten years ago, Johnson & Johnson partnered with UCLA to create the Management Development Institute (MDI) 3 to enhance the management skills of African healthcare leaders. Ineffective leadership and management of health systems and services is a barrier to scaling-up delivery of quality health services, a fundamental component of attaining both the MDGs and of achieving national health priorities in sub-Saharan Africa. This collaboration underscores the importance of building the capacity of local health care professionals to use data in implementing local, regional and national health priorities.
To better understand the importance of data for the future health workforce, Johnson & Johnson has engaged experts like labor economist Haig Nalbantian, a senior partner at Mercer and co-lead of its Workforce Sciences institute. Nalbantian has spent years with his team measuring the economic impact of human capital practices. He believes the lessons learned from the privates sector can be applied to the deployment of health workers in under-resourced settings. Nalbantian also contributed to the development of a new World Economic Forum-Mercer Human Capital Index which assesses the state of human capital and the ability to productively deploy it in 122 countries, representing more than 90% of the world's population.
The Human Capital Index, published in 2013, provides a ranking of the countries covered and identified, those best positioned to contribute to effective workforce development, growth potential, and economic success. It can serve as a powerful tool for decision makers in the public and private sector to identify opportunity areas for human capital development, guide investment and site-selection choices. It is our aspiration that health systems throughout the world will benefit from the expertise that Nalbantian and Mercer's Workforce Sciences team brings to labor market analyses. He is currently working with a number of our partners including FHI 360 and IntraHealth to integrate his approach to data into current and future programming.
However, the challenge is not reserved for resourcelimited settings. By 2020, the US itself will face a shortage of 800,000 nurses. Through the Campaign for Nursing's Future, a coordinated strategy to promote nursing in the United States, Johnson & Johnson is working to address this shortage. The initiative began in 2002 to reduce America's critical nursing shortage by attracting a new wave of people into the profession through recruitment, scholarships and retention efforts.
The American Academy of Colleges of Nursing credits the Campaign with attracting an additional 750,000 nurses to the profession since its inception. An article published in the New England Journal of Medicine in April 20135 cited the Campaign for Nursing's Future as one of several major factors that have boosted interest in the nursing profession since 2002.
Our company's commitment to patients has always been inextricably linked to our commitment to doctors and nurses and the health workforce. The big data revolution gives us an even greater opportunity to support health care workers in even more effective ways than before. We're proud of our legacy of work with health care workers, and we remain committed to working with partners to help more people live longer, happier and more productive lives.
REFERENCES
1. Millennium Development Goals | Johnson & Johnson, , http:// www.jnj.com/our-giving/saving-and-improving-lives/mdg (last visited Apr 24, 2015).
2. A Commitment to Community Health Workers: Improving Data for Decision Making | Frontline Health Workers Coalition, , http://frontlinehealthworkers.org/chwreport/ (last visited Apr 24, 2015).
3. UCLA/Johnson & Johnson Management Development Institute | UCLA Anderson School of Management, , http://www.anderson. ucla.edu/price/jnj/mdi (last visited Apr 24, 2015).
4. The Human Capital Report 2013 - The World Economic Forum, , http://reports.weforum.org/human-capital-index-2013/ (last visited Apr 24, 2015).
5. David I. Auerbach et al., The Nursing Workforce in an Era of Health Care Reform, 368 N. ENGL. J. MED. 1470-1472 (2013).
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