Helping Babies Survive in Jamaica: An Integrated Needs-Based Approach for HRH Planning and Training

Maternal, newborn and child health (MNCH) is a priority area of Jamaica’s Ministry of Health and with neonatal deaths and stillbirths being reported in the news, there is public interest in ensuring demonstrable action is taken. This context justifies implementing our innovation in Jamaica, an idea developed jointly by our team, a partnership between the Jamaica Ministry of Health, the Women’s Health Network Jamaica and the Dalhousie University WHO/PAHO Collaborating Centre on Health Workforce Planning & Research. Our integrated innovation is to create the right conditions to provide sustained effective essential care to mothers and newborns in Jamaica. No health care innovation is fully sustainable unless there is a corresponding innovation in health systems planning for long-term impact. Our innovation addresses the immediate and on-going need for additional training of health workers in newborn care with the need to effectively plan for the MNCH workforce, based on the needs of the population. We plan to work at the system-level by applying a needs-based workforce planning framework and at the service level by implementing the Helping Babies Survive suite of heath provider training programs. By integrating these, we will contribute to the overall action being taken by the Ministry of Health through their Programme to Reduce Maternal and Child Mortality and build upon their already-established commitment to needs-based planning, leading to scalability and sustainability.