How National Health Workforce Accounts Can Help Governments Achieve Universal Health Coverage

National governments that want to achieve the health-related targets of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or universal health coverage (UHC) need a health workforce with the right size and skill mix to meet their populations’ health needs.

But you can’t have a skilled health workforce without teachers and trainers who can prepare health workers for their specific roles in the health care system.

Yet countries globally face challenges in:

  • Providing high-quality education and training that supports the needs of health systems
  • Equitably deploying health workers to match populations’ needs
  • Monitoring performance to ensure high-quality care nationwide
  • Promoting and retaining staff throughout their careers

In response to these challenges, the World Health Organization (WHO) and its partners developed National Health Workforce Accounts (NHWA) to help governments standardize health workforce information systems and rapidly aggregate and display health workforce data to inform national evidence-based policy decisions.

What Are National Health Workforce Accounts?