WHO Progress Report on Health Workforce Education

The World Health Report 2006 – Working together for health recognized the importance of the health workforce in country health systems, referring to the urgent need to increase the numbers of health workers to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. This was later followed by World Health Assembly resolution WHA59.23 on scaling up health workforce production that resulted in the WHO initiative on transforming and scaling up health professionals’ education and training. The initiative focuses on the importance of transforming the health workforce to meet the needs of its Member States.

The key objective of this report is to highlight the progress on the strategies and activities of WHO and its partners to transform health workforce education. It documents the activities undertaken in support of World Health Assembly resolution WHA66.23 on transforming health workforce education in support of universal health coverage. During 2013–2015, WHO supported Member States in their efforts to address health workforce challenges by developing and implementing the transformative education guidelines and website, the Global Evaluation Tool and an eBook on integrating a social determinants of health approach into health workforce education and training.