After a long period of neglect, the issue of human resources for health (HRH) has recently emerged as a core component on the international health agenda, with policy makers increasingly eager to learn from experience elsewhere. This article investigates systematically the opportunities and challenges associated with the use of cross-national comparisons of HRH policies and practices. It review...

Developing multi-disciplinary public health training is an international as well as national public health issue. In the UK, recent government health policy has emphasised the importance of developing multi-disciplinary public health activity to improve the nation’s health. The English white paper Saving Lives: Our Healthier Nation recognises that the current lack of career pathways for non-med...

International comparative studies constitute a highly valuable contribution to public policy research. Analysing different policy designs offers not only a mean of knowing the phenomenon itself but also gives us insightful clues on how to improve existing practices. Although much of the work carried out in this realm relies on quantitative appraisal of the data contained in international databa...

while many international organisations have independent evaluations, including the international monetary fund (imf) and world health organization (who), uniquely the world bank in its 2015 world development report sought to ascertain the potential biases that influence how its staff interpret evidence and influence policy. here, we describe the world bank’s study design, including experiments ...