Networking Collaboratively: The Brazilian Observatório on Human Resources in Health
Authors
- Volker Hauck
- Francisco Eduardo Campos
A case study prepared for the project ‘Capacity, Change and Performance’ organised by ECDPM.
The Observatório is a network of university institutes, research centres and one federal office dealing with human resources questions in the health sector of Brazil. Today, the Observatório consists of 13 so-called network "nodes" or "workstations" as the network members call them, which are coordinated via a secretariat consisting of staff members of the Ministry of Health and the Brasilia office of the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO).
The idea for a formal network on human resources for the health sector came to Brazil in 1998 as part of a PAHO initiative to improve human resources policymaking throughout Latin America. At that time, policy for human resources planning, develop- ment and management in the health sector had become a key concern in various Latin-American countries. This was partly because the market-based policies pursued in the region in the 1980s and early 1990s had led to broad neglect of this theme.
