Behavioural Science for International Health Workforce

Behavioural Science for International Health Workforce: Improving the quality of health services through an understanding of the learning, professional development and behaviour of people working in health settings.

Our vision is to support health systems to reach universal health coverage by understanding and driving change in the development and practice of health workforce.

Our Behavioural Science for International Health Workforce Group combines:
· Research into international health workforce development and practice, including the application of behavioural science
· Teaching and learning partnerships for international health workforce
· Faculty development for international health workforce
· International volunteering activities that support workforce development.

Objectives
Work across the University of Manchester’s core goals of research, teaching and social responsibility, doing impactful research that reduces global health inequalities and supports the systems that develop high quality health workforce in areas of most need.
Enable high quality behavioural research with and within the organisations and systems where behavioural research would support their outcomes.
Increase funding opportunities, particularly at the intersection of health workforce education, training and behaviour change.

Research and discovery
Our research is improving the quality and quantity of international health workforce who are providing safe and high quality health services. In addition to research we are working to enhance education and training of health workforce.

Leadership in behavioural research: ESRC funded leadership hub for behavioural research in the UK where we are co-investigators and leads of a work package and a theme; NHS England initiative to train health psychologists to work on health workforce behaviour change within Integrated Care Systems
Research in improving health workforce: Medical/health professional/pedagogic research, using behavioural science to improve health workforce practice.

Teaching and learning partnerships
Supporting the school and faculty teams to:
Deepening partnerships with long-term partners, to develop from licensees, to international leaders in faculty development for high quality health professional education.
Developing new partnerships
Supporting current partners to develop high quality health professional education research, to improve their activities, their international reputation for teaching and learning excellence and therefore the prestige of our partnerships with them.

A part of our teaching and learning activity is commissioned work to provide training in behavioural science to organisations e.g., NHSE, UKHSA, iCARS (Danish Government), Commonwealth Pharmacists Association.

Social Responsibility
The Change Exchange (TCE) is a collaborative of psychologists with expertise in behavioural science, led through the University of Manchester. Our purpose is to translate behavioural science to understand, drive and evaluate change to increase good health and wellbeing. TCE started in 2015. We have worked in around 20 LMIC.

Capacity building. Including the Change Exchange (supporting international health partnerships to use behavioural science) and development of capacity of health professional educators through the SMS internationalisation partnerships.
Delivering impact: Working on the edge of translational research so that our research is embedded in activities that aim to improve health, as well as researching change, specifically with international health partnerships, including World Health Organisation and the Tropical Health and Education Trust (now GHP).


Scope
· The behavioural impacts of education and training and other interventions on nurses, doctors, pharmacists and others in a variety of clinical fields e.g., antimicrobial resistance.
· The impact of transnational education on the lives and careers of health workforce.
· The development and implementation of competency based education for health workforce.
· How behavioural science can be useful in the training of health workforce
· How behavioural research can be embedded in organisations to create sustainable quality improvement systems and contribute to the science of behaviour.
· How we can increase the capacity of organisations to use behavioural research.
· Reducing health inequalities by understanding how to improve the equality, diversity and inclusivity of researchers and research.

Specialist content areas
Behavioural science and behaviour change
Anti-microbial stewardship
Maternal and child health
Women’s health
Refugee and asylum-seeking doctors

Examples of our work

Research and discovery

Grants from NIHR, MRC and Global Health Partnerships (formerly THET) to research the behavioural impacts of education and training interventions of nurses, doctors, pharmacists and others in a variety of clinical fields e.g., antimicrobial resistance.

Outputs
· Policy briefs for government and healthcare organisations
· High quality publications about international development of health workforce and international workforce in the UK
· Grants to conduct high quality research with impact
· Long term agreement for provision of behavioural science to WHO
· Co-applicants in the ESRC-funded Leadership Hub for Behavioural Research (BR-UK)

Teaching and learning (international partnerships for health workforce and faculty development)
· British council grant to pilot a faculty development hub in Mansoura University, Egypt.
· Development of a Transnational Education (TNE) product for behavioural science.
· Development of the new competency standards framework for medicine and dentistry in Ghana, with behaviourally informed recommendations for implementation.
· Extensive training of health workforce to use behavioural science in their own practice (including developing interventions and having behaviour change conversations)

Social responsibility

· Behavioural scientists work with international health partnerships funded by Department of Health and Social Care (Fleming Fund). They provide behavioural science expertise to understand how to implement antibiotic prescribing audit and guidelines and research that process (called The Change Exchange)
· Working with REACHE (Refugee and Asylum Seeking Doctors) to understand benefits and impacts of the programme

Outputs
· Improved impact of the health partnerships
· Consultancy / business engagement funding
· Publications focused on using behavioural science in international workforce development.