Healthcare workers

Health care workers, central to all levels of health systems, bring to their professional roles various degrees of professional and educational experience, medical specializations, cultural and geographical context knowledge, as well as personal beliefs, values and lived experiences. 

Healthcare workers are present at the community level as health or community volunteers, at rural or local health stations or centres overseeing maternal and child health and vaccination programs, in city-based health care centres, and surgical units or trauma wards in hospitals. They are engaged in specializations requiring years of further training as well as embedded within their local communities and contexts involved in research. They are at the forefront of caring for people within disaster zones, pandemic and epidemics and other crisis contexts. 

In this section we recognize the contributions, experiences, perspectives of health care workers, and the polices and challenges relevant to their profession. Articles, webinars, conferences, and other resources are highlighted to explore and share relevant to health care work. 

RECOGNISING HEALTHCARE WORKER WEEK

Healthcare worker week occurs each year in early April, coinciding with World Health Day - to recognise the enormous contributions of Healthcare workers to communities and to health systems.#HealthForAll

Policy Report: The State of Women and Leadership in Global Health

By Women in Global Health, March 2023

Today, women hold around 70% of health worker jobs globally, over 80% of nursing and over 90% of midwifery roles. Women’s work -paid and unpaid – forms the essential foundation for health, well-being and delivery of health systems. 

Despite the contribution women make to health systems and supporting the realization of health for all, women hold only 25% of leadership roles in the sector. If leadership roles were allocated on merit then, since women are 70% of health workers, 70% of health sector leaders would be women. This is the opposite of the current situation where men hold 75% of leadership roles but are only 30% of health workers.

This gendered leadership gap is examined in this report, drawing both on global data and country case studies from India, Nigeria and Kenya 

Further using an intersectional lens, this report explores how the primary target groups for most global health organizations and programs - women from low- and middle-income countries - are least represented in global health leadership. This is another dimension of the XX Paradox. In addition, we seek to highlight how leadership in health is as diverse as women themselves. Although the majority of women health workers do not hold formal leadership roles, women are driving change at all levels in health from community to global. At the same time, women want recognition, equal career progression and aspire to senior decision-making roles and the benefits that go with them. Diverse women working in health have an equal right to leadership; this includes the millions of women community health workers currently subsidizing global health with their unpaid work.

Recognition: Heroines of Health

Recognising the significant contributions of Health workers to their communities.

Women in Global Health launched the Heroines of Health Awards in 2017 to recognise the wealth of talent of women  working in health and to provide a platform to voice their concerns as global leaders and to transform our societies to be more gender equitable in health. Although women are the majority of health workers, they are frequently marginalised in leadership; underpaid and unpaid; and not adequately protected from physical and mental harm. To date 53 women health leaders have been recognised by the Awards. 

Amongst awardees have been:

2023 Heroines of Health Awardees (most recent awardees)

SEARCH Community health workers: The community health workers working in rural India with the non-profit organisation -Society for Education, Action and Research in Community Health (SEARCH) – which aims to reach the vulnerable, semi-tribal and deprived communities within a district of Maharashtra state, India. Many of the health workers associated with SEARCH are small farmers and work from home in addition to their role as health messengers educating their community on prevention and treatment of common ailments. During the COVID-19 pandemic they took on valuable roles in ensuring their communities were informed about preventative measures.

2022 Heroines of Health Awardees 

Mwanamvua Boga, a nurse Manager with the Kenya Medical Research Institutes Wellcome Trust research programme (KEMRI- Wellcome) in Kilifi, Kenya. She works in an extremely busy paediatric unit providing care to children aged 1-2 with various conditions including those born prematurely, those with meningitis, severe malaria, severe pneumonia, and cancer. Alongside her nursing leadership she also provides training programmes for health workers in relation to communication and emotional intelligence skills within their work context. ” I teach about managing emotions – when I feel overwhelmed balancing my responsibilities, I recognize how I feel. I take a step back from my emotions and reflect – and then strategize.” 

See Haaland-ICARE model for further details about this training.

2017 Heroines of Health Awardee (first year of award)