About Us
The Health Workforce Advocacy Initiative (HWAI) is an international civil society network addressing the global health workforce crisis, a fundamental and critical barrier to achieving universal coverage. Given its broad-based civil society membership, HWAI is well-placed to advocate for the essential role of the health workforce in meeting global health goals through 2015 and in the post-2015 policy environment and for keeping HRH high on the global and country-level health and development agenda.
HWAI is the civil-society led network of the Global Health Workforce Alliance. This network will be an on-going forum for strategizing, advocacy support, information sharing, and idea and information generation.
We hope that this network will become an extensive, global community that is civil society-led and open to all who believe that they can contribute to and benefit from the network, the forum for a social movement dedicated to strengthening the health workforce, the systems on which health workers depend, and ultimately—and primarily—the people who will live or die, who will heal or who will suffer, depending on the strength of the health system and the health workforce.
Accomplishments
Our accomplishments and activities thus far have included:
- Developing advocacy toolkit for health professionals to engage in health workforce advocacy.
- Trainings at the First Global Forum on Human Resources for Health (Kampala, Uganda, March 2008) for health workers and other participants on human rights, advocacy, and macroeconomic policies.
- Advocacy for a strong Global Fund role in health system strengthening, contributing to improvements in how the Global Fund now addresses health system strengthening.
- Creating and disseminating our Guiding Principles for National Health Workforce Strategies.
- Health workforce advocacy at 2007 and 2008 G8 summits, including helping to spearhead civil society advocacy on health workforce for the 2008 summit.
- Health workforce advocacy during the 3rd Global Forum in Recife, Brazil in November 2013.