Heroes Community of Practice

Addressing structural barriers

September 29th, 2025 15:00-16:30 CET

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Host: WHO Europe

Abstract:

Structures are the governance, institutional, data, financing, and labor-market arrangements that shape how a country plans, produces, distributes and retains its health workers. When these are weak or misaligned, countries struggle to forecast needs, fund and train the right mix of workers, and to deploy them equitably, which undermines Universal Health Coverage (UHC). In this CoP we will introduce structural issues, their impacts on HWP and have four Heroes countries identify their experiences dealing with the impacts.

Agenda:

15:00-15:05 Opening
15:05-15:15 Introduction: What are structural  barriers? (Thomas Hughes-Waage)
15:15-15:25 Recent Research: Impact of governance on health outcomes (Levan Samadashvili)
15:25-15:35 Policy Brief #3: Institutionalizing HWP (European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies)
15:35-16:05 Country Experiences: examples of addressing structural barriers (Speakers from Malta: Stakeholder engagement and governance; Norway: Data and planning; Sweden: National & Regional Perspectives; Ireland: Building and maintaining political consensus)
16:05-16:40 Community of Practice engagement (Country speakers and expert panel discussion and question forum)
16:40-16:45 Closing