Health systems around the world are looking to improve access to health services and health system effectiveness. Two key interlocking components of a sustainable health workforce solution are to keep scarce skills in the system by effective retention strategies, and to enable them to be deployed where they can best make a positive difference to population health.

Many management, education and policy solutions to achieving a “right time, right place” strategy are being tried and tested in different countries. Human Resources for Health is pleased to announce a new thematic series “Right Time, Right Place: Improving access to health service through effective retention and distribution of health workers.” The aim of this series is to report on new analysis, strategic intelligence, and evidence that is pointing to improvements in retention and distribution of health workers.

Sponsored by Health Workforce Australia (HWA) , the thematic series will provide new insights for practitioners, policy makers and analysts who have a responsibility or interest in what can be done to improve access to health through more effective human resources policies, planning and management.

Authors can choose to write on any subject matter that covers retention and/or distribution of health workers, and in any system or country. Examples could include:

• detailed organisational or system case studies that describe how barriers to improvement of retention or distribution have been identified and overcome
• reports on regional, state or national HRH policy interventions that have been tested or evaluated
• studies of how to improve new graduate, “early career” retention
• examination of the impact of new working patterns, new skill mix or new roles on retention or distribution
• reports on the implementation and effect of incentives to achieve more effective geographic or sector distribution
• reports on the distribution and retention aspects of achieving health workforce sustainability
• descriptions of the development and application of new analytical indicators, tools and techniques to retention and/or distribution.

A selection of papers that meet peer review requirements, are submitted on time, and meet one of the thematic series requirements will be published in the thematic series. Author publication fees for these papers will be waived, as HWA will be covering the costs.

Authors are invited to contact James Buchan with any pre-submission outline ideas. Submission of papers will be to the normal peer review process at Human Resources for Health. Please note that the peer review process is entirely independent of Health Workforce Australia. Papers should meet the usual Human Resources for Health requirements of size, style and structure.

In order for your author publication fee to be covered by the sponsor Health Workforce Australia, before submitting please contact James Buchan (email: James.Buchan@hwa.gov.au) to obtain the details to cover the Article Processing Charge. When submitting, please indicate “right time, right place” thematic series in your cover letter.

Deadline for submission of the papers is 31st August 2013

For further information contact the thematic series editor at James.Buchan@hwa.gov.au