The severe global shortage of health and care workers poses a dangerous threat to health systems, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The authors of the article “Prioritising the health and care workforce shortage: protect, invest, together”, including six health ministers and the WHO Director-General, assert that this workforce crisis requires urgent action and propose “protect, invest, together” to tackle it. Deep protection of the existing workforce, they assert, is needed through improved working conditions, fair compensation, upholding rights, addressing discrimination and violence, closing gender inequities, and implementing the WHO Global Health and Care Worker Compact to ensure dignified working environments. All countries must prioritize retaining workers to build resilient health systems. Significantly increased and strategic long-term investments are imperative in both training new health workers through educational channels and sustaining their employment. Countries should designate workforce development, especially at the primary care level, as crucial human capital investments …
Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030): grounding action in local realities to reach the unreached
WHO’s 154th Executive Board meeting provided a sobering picture of how the COVID-19 pandemic reversed decades of progress in expanding global immunization coverage and controlling vaccine-preventable diseases. In response, the World Health Organization is calling for action “grounded in local realities”. Growing evidence supports fresh approaches that do exactly that. Tom Newton-Lewis is part of the community of researchers and practitioners who have observed that “health systems are complex and adaptive” and, they say, that explains why top-down control rarely succeeds. However, top-down control and directive management appear to have been key to how immunization programmes achieved impressive results in previous decades. Hence, it may be challenging for the current generation of global immunization leaders to consider that enabling approaches that leverage intrinsic motivation, foster collective responsibility, and empower teams – especially for local staff – are the ones needed now. One example of an enabling approach is the Movement for Immunization …
Widening inequities: Immunization Agenda 2030 remains “off-track”
The WHO Director General’s report to the 154th session of the Executive Board on progress towards the Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030) goals paints a “sobering picture” of uneven global recovery since COVID-19. As of 2022, 3 out of 7 main impact indicators remain “off-track”, including numbers of zero-dose children, future deaths averted through vaccination, and outbreak control targets. Current evidence indicates substantial acceleration is essential in order to shift indicators out of the “off-track” categories over the next 7 years. While some indicators showed recovery from pandemic backsliding, the report makes clear these improvements are generally insufficient to achieve targets set for 2030. While some indicators have improved from 2021, overall performance still “lags 2019 levels” (para 5). Specifically, global coverage of three childhood DTP vaccine doses rose from 81% in 2021 to 84% in 2022, but remains below the 86% rate achieved in 2019 before the pandemic (para 5). …
Making sense of sensemaking
In her article “A Shared Lens for Sensemaking in Learning Analytics”, Sasha Poquet argues that the field of learning analytics lacks a shared conceptual language to describe the process of sensemaking around educational data. She reviews prominent theories of sensemaking, delineating tensions between assumptions in dominant paradigms. Poquet then demonstrates the eclectic use of sensemaking frameworks across empirical learning analytics research. For instance, studies frequently conflate noticing dashboard information with interpreting its significance. To advance systematic inquiry, she calls for revisiting epistemic assumptions to reconcile tensions between cognitive and sociocultural traditions. Adopting a transactional perspective, Poquet suggests activity theory, conceptualizations of perceived situational definitions, and ecological affordance perception can jointly illuminate subjective and objective facets of sensemaking. This preliminary framework spotlights the interplay of internal worldviews, external systemic contexts, and emergent perceptual processes in appropriating analytics. The implications span research and practice. The proposed constructs enable precise characterization of variability …
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