Data Collection on Donor-Supported Health Workers: Lessons Learned From Improving Health Workforce Data Supported by the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)

Abstract

The Global Strategy on Human Resources for Health: Workforce 2030 has called for the improvement of health workforce data and implementation of health workforce registries. It is critical to capture the health workforce supported by donors in order to have a complete understanding of the health workforce across countries. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) developed an innovative pilot human resources for health (HRH) data collection system (including a data entry template and structured dataset) to collect HRH data for the health workforce supported by the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). The pilot system filled HRH data gaps in nine key countries, providing valuable insight for program planning. The implementation details of this exercise can be used as a case study on collecting and applying data on health workers, including those supported by donor funding.