Health Workforce Challenges and Solutions: A Focus on Population Needs

Dear Colleagues,

It is our pleasure to announce a new Special Issue titled “Health Workforce Challenges and Solutions: A Focus on Population Needs”. This Special Issue follows a successful Special Issue on the future health workforce and the next chapter of our health workforce collection in the journal.

Undeniably, the health workforce is the backbone of health systems. Doctors, nurses, dentists, pharmacists, and allied health workers are vital to the functioning of any health system. The importance of healthcare workers, especially the social and welfare workforce, is becoming more important in a post-COVID-19 world.

Solutions aimed at redesigning the health workforce need to be people-centric and more responsive to population needs. However, it is still unclear to what extent the current health workforce design addresses or meets population needs. In many countries, health workforce distribution is biased towards urban or city areas. Primary and preventative care workforce is lacking in many countries. There are growing challenges due to transition environments (demographic, epidemiological, social, and technological), and solutions that are applicable to one country/content might not be necessarily suitable for another country or content. Tailoring health workforce solutions to meet current and future heath challenges, address professional sensitivities, and curated to meet population needs is a growing body of research.

Globally, there is an improved focus towards addressing health workforce challenges and meeting population needs. It is encouraging news that the WHO has initiated a Global Strategy on Human Resources for Health: Workforce 2030. Several key research teams are actively involved in addressing health workforce challenges that involve models of care, integrated approaches, scope of practice, regulation, and workforce planning. 

The following are the key issues to be addressed in the Special Issue:

• Health workforce planning and policy solutions to address population needs;
• How do we sensitise the health profession to the growing needs of the public?
• Trade-offs between technology and health workforce;
• Population-centric health workforce solutions that also focus on patient safety and quality of care;
• Regulatory frameworks and scope of practice;
• New methodologies and solutions in health workforce planning;
• Application of health workforce design solutions to education systems.

For this Special Issue, we have decided to take a population-focused approach and encourage articles that identify health workforce challenges and solutions towards meeting population needs in the global south and global north. Broadly, we welcome articles that cover challenges at an education, practice, or regulation level required to facilitate innovative health workforce solutions. We plan to include a wide range of health workforce articles that spread across all health professions or disciplines (medicine, nursing, pharmacy, dentistry, allied health, social and welfare workforce).

We encourage both quantitative and qualitative research articles, as well as systematic reviews or commentaries/perspectives. Well-written articles displaying methodological rigour will be preferred.

Please do not hesitate to email us for any queries or interesting article ideas or content.

Dr. Madhan Balasubramanian
Dr. Peivand Bastani
Dr. Farah Purwaningrum
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2500 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.