Pape Gaye, President and CEO of IntraHealth, David Nelson, Assistant Director of Communications, and Catherine Murphy, IntraHealth Training and Learning Advisor, published two commentaries in the journal Human Resources for Health. Gaye and Nelson co-authored “Effective Scale-Up: Avoiding the Same Old Traps,” and Murphy wrote, “Focusing on the Essentials: Learning for Performance.”

Murphy’s commentary describes the rationale, methodology and use of IntraHealth’s Learning for Performance (LFP) approach. With examples from IntraHealth’s work in India, Mali and Bangladesh, the article highlights the effectiveness of LFP in both pre- and in-service training of health care professionals.

“I’m pleased to have an open access online article published in such a respected journal as Human Resources for Health,” says Murphy. “Already, several HRH professionals around the world have contacted me and perused the IntraHealth and Capacity Project websites as a result of the article.  I hope that LFP will be considered as a useful approach by other organizations involved in health care education and training.”

Gaye and Nelson discuss common pitfalls besetting training programs, including a lack of country-level coordination, inequitable access, interrupted services and a lack of training reinforcement due to other unaddressed performance factors. In the context of the urgent need to strengthen human resources for health in many countries, Gaye and Nelson draw on IntraHealth’s experience to outline promising practices for scaling-up education and training, including:

• Assessing performance gaps and opportunities before designing a training initiative
• Addressing performance factors other than skills and knowledge that health workers need to perform well
• Applying the Learning for Performance approach
• Standardizing curricula throughout a country
• Linking pre-service education, in-service training and professional associations
• Enhancing traditional education
• Strengthening human resources information systems to improve workforce planning, policies and management
• Applying technology to meet training needs.