Workforce competencies
A world safe from vaccine preventable diseases requires well-functioning human resources within a supportive environment. The goal is for all countries to have a workforce able to implement all functions of the Expanded Programme for Immunization (EPI).
The Global Vaccine Action Plan (GVAP) describes building capacity of managers and front line health workers as a recommended action to support strong systems. Immunization programmes in ministries of health throughout the world have initiated workforce development initiatives among their GVAP activities. However, many countries struggled in the past due to lack of proper guidelines to help them address workforce planning, management and evaluation.
The goal of this site is to provide resources that will support staffing, development and long term planning of the EPI workforce. These resources can apply to countries with immunization as a separate programme as well as those who take an integrated approach to health service management and delivery. They are also equally useful whether a country’s immunization program management is centralized or decentralized.
Standard Competencies Framework for the Immunization Workforce
The use of competencies helps countries better distribute resources as per required functions and more adequately define roles and responsibilities of their health workforce. This framework is intended to support the assessment, design, development and evaluation of workforce.
Get involved with competencies: Contact us to provide feedback about the competencies resources or to request further support for using competencies in EPI programmes
Overview
To be useful, competencies are not developed in a vacuum. The competencies framework links the competencies of the workforce to the objectives of an organization, both for planning and for monitoring. Organizations, such as an immunization program, define objectives based on their mission. They determine the attributes that would indicate they are meeting their objectives at an agreed-upon level of quality. Based on those attributes, they are able to identify the work functions that are needed to produce quality outputs as well as the competencies that are needed to do the work. Competencies inform key aspects of the human resources function in an organization. Competencies can be used to determine whether work functions are being accomplished to the standards of quality that have been set, and can demonstrate if the organization is meeting its objectives.
Standard Competencies Framework for the Immunization Workforce
This document provides a comprehensive description of the job functions and competencies at four levels of an immunization program: national, province,...
Immunization Competency Domains
The immunization competencies framework defines competencies for eight technical domains, as well as two foundational domains.
How Immunization Competencies Framework was developed
The development of the standard competencies framework was truly a global partner effort, conducted over a 2-year period. This document describes the methods...
The work was presented at the April 2017 meeting of the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE). SAGE agreed with the proposal for publishing the standard competencies as normative guidance for countries’ immunization programmes. In October 2017, WHO and CDC convened a consultative group of immunization experts to review the immunization competencies and provide input into the normative guidance.
SAGE recommendations April 2017
More information
To learn about the project and how standardized competencies can support workforce development activities, read the article published in Vaccine, February 2019