The Global Healthcare Workforce: Challenges, Opportunities and Implications for Planetary Health
A special issue of Challenges (ISSN 2078-1547).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2026 | Viewed by 48
Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
High-quality, resilient, and sustainable healthcare workforces are vital in advancing planetary health and play a pivotal role in tackling global health threats, as illustrated during the recent COVID-19 pandemic. In recent decades, health systems around the world have faced a series of challenges related to fundamental demographic, social, technological, and ecological changes alongside the shifting burden of illness. In particular, the rise in noncommunicable diseases, which now outpace infectious diseases, is placing increasing strains on healthcare systems and the healthcare workforce. At the same time, health systems in the economically developed world have struggled to recruit and retain sufficient healthcare staff to cope with rapidly aging societies and the unprecedented challenges that health systems face. To meet workforce shortages, many of these nations have relied heavily on overseas recruitment, often from middle- or lower-income countries. In many of the latter, poor working conditions, salaries, and opportunities fuel the emigration of healthcare workers to wealthier nations. WHO reports have identified critical shortages of health workers across much of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, weakening the ability of health systems to meet health and environmental risks. This Special Issue will delineate and examine the key challenges facing the healthcare workforce and their implications for, and relationship to, planetary health challenges and potential solutions. It will explore various facets of this phenomenon from the vantage point of different regions, nations, and health systems; how they impact a range of health professions; and the various strategies adopted to address the interconnected global contemporary challenges that they face.
Dr. David Smith
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- healthcare workforces
- planetary health
- health systems
- burden of illness
- health and environmental risks
- global challenges
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