Talent Is Ready: Promising Practices for Helping Immigrant Professionals

Outlines the need to better integrate highly skilled immigrants into the workforce, promising practices in assessment and advising, skill building, and organizational capacity building; and tips and insights for nonprofits, funders, and policy makers

State of Health Equity Movement, 2011 Update Part B: Catalog of Activities DRA Project Report No. 11-02

State of Health Equity Movement, 2011 Update Part B: Catalog of Activities DRA Project Report No. 11-0

Shared Value in Chile: Increasing Private Sector Competitiveness by Solving Social Problems

Over the last few decades, Chile has experienced rapid and sustained economic, social, and institutional development. Crucial challenges remain, however, in the form of social inequity, lack of opportunity, mistrust, and social unrest. The Chilean private sector is at an inflection point in its relationship with society. The corporate sector has both contributed to and benefited from the growth and development of the last decades, but remaining social challenges pose significant constraints to the continued growth of the private sector. High levels of mistrust regarding the role of business in society reflect a widespread belief that profit making activities are merely a demonstration of corporate greed. The Chilean private sector faces a frequently antagonistic relationship with government and civil society that will likely worsen unless companies are able to find ways to authentically link their businesses to efforts to solve Chile's social problems. On the other hand, if government and civil society conclude that the private sector has no contribution to make to the country's social and economic development strategy, Chile will squander an important engine for creating shared prosperity. The good news is that there does not need to be a trade-off between private sector competitiveness and greater prosperity for all Chileans. Shared value, a concept explained in Harvard Professor Michael Porter and Mark Kramer's Harvard Business Review articles, suggests an approach for companies to increase their competitiveness and profitability by helping to solve social problems. The public sector and civil society can increase the social benefits from shared value by thoughtfully partnering with the private secto

Competing by Saving Lives: How Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Companies Create Shared Value in Global Health

This report looks at how pharmaceutical and medical device companies can create shared value in global health by addressing unmet health needs in low- and middle-income countries. Companies have already begun to reap business value and are securing competitive advantages in the markets of tomorrow

State of Health Equity Movement, 2011 Update Part C: Compendium of Recommendations DRA Project Report No. 11-03

State of Health Equity Movement, 2011 Update Part C: Compendium of Recommendations DRA Project Report No. 11-0

Boosting the Immunization Workforce: Lessons from the Merck Vaccine Network - Africa

This report shares lessons learned from The Merck Company Foundation's decade of experience building immunization capacity in Africa. The Merck Vaccine Network -- Africa, a philanthropic initiative to train immunization managers in Kenya, Mali, Uganda, and Zambia, suggests seven key lessons that can help other funders, governments, and NGOs designing or implementing similar vaccine delivery training programs improve the effectiveness and sustainability of their work.Merck's experience designing and supporting the initiative can offer valuable lessons for other actors in the immunization and broader global health fields who are engaged in or planning similar work. Specifically, we identify seven forward-looking lessons that can increase the effectiveness and sustainability of programs to build the capacity of the vaccine workforce in developing countries:Conduct a rigorous needs assessment to anchor efforts in local needs and priorities;Perform ongoing monitoring and evaluation (M&E) to enable programs to adapt, improve, and generate evidence of impact to attract new partners and funding;Create a sustainability plan at the outset to ensure that program impact is maintained beyond the conclusion of initial funding;Embed programs into local health systems to ensure that investments leverage existing infrastructure, relationships, and resources, and that impact can be sustained beyond the life of the program;Employ locally-adapted curricula and appropriate teaching techniques to maximize transfer and retention of relevant knowledge;Incorporate supportive supervision into programs to ensure that transferred knowledge is maintained and acted upon;Facilitate and support regular convening and communication, enabling continuous learning for improvement.In addition to describing the approach taken by MVN-A and the results achieved in the four focus countries, this paper provides additional detail on each lesson, supported by case studies from the MVNA experience

Strengthening Primary Health Care Through Community Health Workers: Investment Case And Financing Recommendations

A report released this week at the Third International Conference on Financing for Development found that there is a strong case for investing in Community Health Worker (CHW) programs as part of integrated health systems. The report was released by leaders from the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, the Republic of Liberia, the U.N. Secretary General's Special Envoy for Financing the Health MDGs and for Malaria, Partners in Health, the Clinton Foundation, the African Leaders Malaria Alliance, and the MDG Health Alliance. The authors encourage domestic governments, international financers, bilateral and multilateral donors, and the broader global health community to finance and support the scale up of CHW programs as part of community-based primary health care through a set of specific recommendations. The authors participated in the crafting of the report and its recommendations as part of a distinguished panel chaired by Ray Chambers, the UN Secretary General's Special Envoy for Financing the Health MDGs and for Malaria, and Prime Minister Hailemariam Dessalegn, President of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia

Education Workforce Initiative: Initial Research

The purpose of this initial research is to offer evidenced possibilities in the key areas of education workforce roles, recruitment, training, deployment and leadership, along with suggested areas for further research to inform innovation in the design and strengthening of the public sector education workforce. The examples described were identified through the process outlined in the methodology section of this report, whilst we recognise that separation of examples from their context is problematic – effective innovations are highly sensitive to context and uncritical transfer of initiatives is rarely successful. The research aims to support the Education Workforce Initiative (EWI) in moving forward with engaging education leaders and other key actors in radical thinking around the design and strengthening of the education workforce to meet the demands of the 21st century. EWI policy recommendations will be drawn from a number of country level workforce reform activities and research activity associated with the production of an Education Workforce Report (EWR). This research has informed the key questions, approach and structure of the EWR as outlined in the Education Workforce Report Proposal. Issues pertaining to teaching and learning in primary and secondary education are at the centre of the research reported here; the focus is on moving towards schools as safe places where all children/ young people are able to engage in meaningful activity. The majority of the evidence shared here relates to teachers and school leaders; evidence on learning support staff, district officials and the wider education workforce is scant. Many of the issues examined are also pertinent to the early childhood care and education sector but these are being examined in depth by the Early Childhood Workforce Initiative. Resourcing for the Education Workforce was out of scope of this initial research but the EC recognises, as outlined in the Learning Generation Report, that provision of additional finance is a critical factor in achieving a sustainable, strong and well-motivated education workforce, particularly but not exclusively, in low and middle income countries. The next stage of EWI work will consider the relative costs of current initiatives and modelling of the cost implications of proposed reforms. EWI aims to complement the work on teacher policy design and teacher career frameworks (including salary structures) being undertaken by other bodies and institutions such as Education International, the International Task Force on Teachers for 2030 and the Teachers’ Alliance, most particularly by bringing a focus on school and district leadership, the role of Education Support Professionals (ESPs) and inter-agency working

More and Better Jobs in Home-Care Services

[Excerpt] This study examines recruitment and retention measures in community-based care and support services for adults with disabilities and health problems. It focuses on 10 EU Member States: Austria, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom. It examines 30 case studies from these countries, analysing initiatives that were successful either in creating more jobs in the provision of health and social care for adults in the community or in improving the quality of jobs, with the aim of both attracting new recruits and retaining existing staff