Sustaining success: aligning the public health workforce in South-Eastern Europe with strategic public health priorities

Evaluating the success of Slovenia's policy on the health of children and adolescents: results of an audit

OBJECTIVES

The aims of this audit were twofold: (1) to demonstrate the contribution of the auditing process in evaluating the success of child and adolescent health policy in Slovenia between 2012 and 2019, and (2) to expand on the commentary published in the International Journal of Public Health in 2019 to demonstrate the benefits of auditing in improving public health policy in general.

METHODS

The audit followed health, safety and environmental approaches as per the standards of public health policy.

RESULTS

Due to poor intersectoral coordination and weak associations between environmental and health indicators, no clear evidence could be established that child and adolescent health policy contributed to positive changes in child and adolescent health from 2012 to 2019.

CONCLUSIONS

Auditing should become an essential component of measuring the success of public health policies. Attention should also be paid to the following issues affecting youth health: sleeping and eating habits, economic migration, poverty, etc.

Is there a golden recipe? A scoping review of public health workforce development

BACKGROUND

This study intended to design a suitable and comprehensive approach for a public health workforce development plan with the ultimate goal of meeting the health objectives in different European Region countries.

METHODS

We performed a scoping review, including an accurate and exhaustive country-specific hand-search process, mapping the key concepts and practices used in public health workforce development based on the available evidence worldwide.

RESULTS

We identified nine comparative measures, based on common features from a scoping literature review, for the assessment of public health workforce development plans available in selected countries. This list of nine comparative measures includes: (i) Alignment between the 10 Essential Public Health Operations (EPHOs) or core public health functions and organizational resources and public health priority areas; (ii) Regulations and Norms; (iii) Capacity Assessment; (iv) Datasets and Databases; (v) Workforce Development Strategies, Planning and Management; (vi) Education, Training, Core Competencies and Models; (vii) Licensing, Accreditation and Credentialing; (viii) Forecasting Strategies for Enumerating and Quotas and (ix) Ethical and Professional Codes of Conduct. These measures are essential to develop, sustain and modernize the public health workforce effectively.

CONCLUSION

We propose a well-balanced set of measures for countries aiming to improve or develop their public health workforce based on instruments that are successfully used and applied in a wide range of countries with different public health systems. However, the implementation should be tailored and adopted according to the specific country context and available recourses.