WHO News: Fifth Global Forum on Human Resources 2023

April, 2023

The Fifth Global Forum on Human Resources for Health was successfully held from 3 to 5 April 2023, during World Health Worker Week.

Under the theme of "Protecting, safeguarding, and investing in the health and care workforce," the Forum marked over five years since the adoption of the Global Strategy on Human Resources for Health: Workforce 2030. It provided updates on the progress of its implementation and shared evidence and experiences on workforce development, along with opportunities for the post-COVID-19 era that will inform the implementation of the Working for Health 2022-2030 Action Plan. The Forum delved into the required policy solutions, investments, and multi-sectoral partnerships to address health and care workforce challenges and advance health systems towards universal health coverage and health security. The outcomes of the Forum will inform the United Nations General Assembly's High-Level Meeting on UHC in September 2023.

The Forum was intersectoral in nature, engaging participation from a diverse range of actors, including high-impact decision-makers from the education, finance, gender, health, labour/employment, and migration sectors. The format of the Forum was hybrid, with in-person participation limited to speakers participating in the high-level roundtable dialogue. Parallel sessions and other learning and networking activities were held virtually and made available upon registration through a dedicated IT platform for the Forum. Simultaneous interpretation in English was provided for the high-level roundtables.

WONCA experts participated multiple parallel sessions, icluding the "Rural Pathways: Advancing Equitable Access for Health Workers in Rural and Remote Areas" session, which featured distinguished speakers, including Dr. Özden Gökdemir, Chair of the WONCA Working Party on Environment, and Prof. Bruce Chater, Chair for the WONCA Working Party on Rural Practice. The session also had notable participation from researchers such as Delphin Kolie from the Maferinyah Research Centre in Guinea, Andrea Nove from the research and knowledge management consultancy Novametrics in the UK, and Prabir Chatterjee from the State Health Resource Centre Rapulr in India. The session was effectively moderated by Remco Van de Pas, a Public Health Doctor for the Centre of Planetary Health Policy in Germany.