HRIS Collaboration and Global Partnering

Dykki Settle, Dr. Pamela McQuide and Dr. Jim McCaffery met with key stakeholders from WHO (HMN), PAHO and the World Bank on May 24 and 25 in Washington, DC, to discuss future areas of collaboration around Human Resources Information Systems. After an overview by each organization of their HRIS activities, the group was pleased to discover numerous areas for potential collaboration and synergy and felt that the meeting was opportunely timed. Among the areas for future collaboration are developing policy questions and standards for key indicators, indicator criteria, health workforce classification, measurement strategies and data sourcing. The group also spent time on a process for consensus building between stakeholders and determining critical content chapters for the pending WHO HRIS Guidelines. These HRIS collaborative efforts will go forward as a part of the Health Metrics Network meeting in Geneva in July and at a joint WHO/WB/Capacity Project Health Workforce Observatory meeting in Arusha, Tanzania, for the East, Central and Southern Africa Region in Fall 2006.