Understanding the Health Labor Market Dynamics

There is a growing recognition that the increased demand for health services brought about by population growth, aging, and economic development is putting greater emphasis on how countries train, recruit, deploy, retain, and manage their health workforce. This has resulted in an unprecedented and much-needed focus on health workforce policy, planning, production, deployment, and ongoing professional development, while taking labour market factors into account. Low- and middle-income countries (L&MICs) must develop effective strategies to optimize health workforce supply while also supporting recruitment, deployment, retention, and performance in order to address their health workforce challenges. The challenge ahead is to decide on what to do and, more importantly, how to do it. This Chapter focuses on the use of labour market dynamics concepts and frameworks in developing policies and strategies to address the current workforce challenges in L&MICs.