Diseases that move between humans and animals require a workforce that can efficiently and effectively coordinate and collaborate across human, animal, environment health sectors for better detection, prevention and response. This “One Health Workforce” requires sector-specific technical competencies that meet international standards and requirements, multi-sectoral competencies that give personnel the skills, knowledge and right mindset to work across sectors and supportive operational capacity within institutions that foster multi-sectoral work. OHCEA/ One Health Workforce (OHW) set out a five-year vision of “One Health Workforce education and training for in-service and pre-service that is informed by needs derived from government driven needs assessments”.
To better understand nationally defined workforce capacities and gaps/needs, OHCEA/OHW fast-tracked a standardized three-step approach ( (i) Review of existing country assessments (international and local) to produce a synthesis of government defined needs (Consultancy) (ii) Cross-sectoral 3-4 days systems mapping stakeholder workshop involving government technocrats using OH SMARTTM (iii) High level validation workshop with key decision makers from across sectors to confirm workforce needs/gaps and workforce development action plans) to define workforce needs in all its operational countries between January and September 2017. The steps included
- Document review of existing assessments by consultant(s) to develop a synthesis of national workforce capacity gaps
- Stakeholder meeting with technical experts to enrich the synthesized document
- Validation meeting with high level representatives from different sectors.
Country syntheses were preceded by a regional workshop that leveled understanding of the workforce assessment process and built skills in OH SMARTTM, a tool that was used to map cross-sectoral workforce gaps. OH SMARTTM provides a standardized process for creating systems-based mapping of agency and stakeholder interactions across sectors around One Health (OH) challenges. The tool was tailored to better capture cross-sectoral workforce needs.
The harmonization meeting
A regional approach has become apparent to undertake a deeper analysis of what has been generated at the country level to develop a workforce development roadmap and workforce packages for selected priority diseases in response to identified national capacity gaps. The workforce packages will be implemented by OHCEA and partners in the coming years.
The rich information generated during country assessments called for a common approach on the next steps. Key players were convened to develop a roadmap that will serve as a guide to countries for the next steps on workforce planning and policy communication. During the meeting, OHCEA developed practical workforce development interventions capable of addressing specific gaps so as to offer capacity building solutions that governments together with academia can deliver to address identified gaps in the medium to long term. The regional meeting also served to map activities that OHCEA/ OHW have delivered over the years and how they align to national needs.
A 5-day working meeting was planned for December 4th – 8th, 2017 in Kampala, Uganda. It brought together participants that have been actively involved in the country-specific processes, plus regional partners in health.
The goal of the regional harmonization workshop was to synthesize findings into a regional road map for workforce planning and policy communication with very clear action steps, models for workforce development with clear strategies for mobilizing resources to broaden implementation, and publication outlines.
The 46 participants included consultants that undertook the workforce assessment synthesis, faculty from OHCEA member institutions in eight countries that actively coordinated the synthesis exercise, EPT2/GHSA implementing partners, OHCEA secretariat staff, USA One Health Workforce implementing University institutions and regional development partners in health.
Seven country (Cameroon, DRC, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania and Uganda) report-outs of synthesized workforce needs were presented and shared during the workshop. This enabled participants to appreciate the approach used, the key findings and lessons learned. All power point presentations have been made available. The results from country presentations were categorized into a regional workforce needs matrix with broad themes including: communication, coordination and collaboration, human resource, policy and regulations, education and training (technical), education and training (cross-sectoral), data management, leadership, management, institutional (resource/funding), laboratory, surveillance, gender, biosecurity, monitoring and evaluation, Anti-Microbial Resistance (AMR), case reporting, emergency preparedness, disaster management, diagnostics, others (e.g. trade).
A review of OHW/OHCEA year 2, 3 & 4 activities were mapped against the themes, and results indicated that most activities were aligned to both technical and cross sectoral education and training themes.
The workshop exposed how the OHW/OHCEA workforce synthesis and workforce development feeds into and complements GHSA and IHR/JEE efforts. By identifying Education and Training Needs and developing relevant training programs, we are contributing to enabling nations to move forward their core capacities. The findings have exposed the need for additional skills and competencies beyond field epidemiologists. Additionally, the findings provide valuable details necessary for One Health to be operationalized at different phases (preparedness, response, after action).
This is valuable information for targeted areas of work for OHCEA in year 5 and beyond.
For One Health to become a mainstream response, there is need to break the operational barriers. This requires high level buy-in from different sectors of government as well as negotiation at the mid-technical level to understand one health and support its implementation in the day to day activities. The meeting initiated a process of developing plausible workforce development interventions that can be strategically implemented in order to cross the current One Health operational barriers. This is intended to demonstrate practical interventions that can break down these barriers.
The workshop developed country and regional publication outlines including titles, possible journals and an action plan on how to further develop the publications. For each country, a list of faculty to write up the publication was generated and are being followed up with. These publications will enable the wider global public to access the results of the synthesis. Online reports (dashboards) were generated and will be further developed to enable easy access.
The workshop also created awareness among participants about working in partnership and its advantages. A list of country network contacts were generated and will form the basis for exploring partnership opportunities within countries. Information relevant for developing an OHCEA resource mobilization (RM) strategy was generated and will be used by OHCEA in reviewing its RM strategy, this included value proposition for networks to its member institutions and individual faculty, to donors. Draft project ideas out of the workforce development process were generated and a regional working group named. This will further spear the development of the OHCEA workforce development roadmap.
Other opportunities
- Some partnership opportunities from P&R (regional manager East Africa) were highlighted including some joint publication.
- Country action plans and costed plan are on-going, for those countries that have not yet concluded their national action plans, the information generated from country processes and regional synthesis provide valuable data to make input into country action planning processes. It was indicated that some countries are requesting this value addition through their OH platform fora, Uganda is one such case though its 5-year action plan and costed plans have been concluded.