TABLE 1.

Approaches to Assess Health Workforce Requirements

	Approach	Defining Workforce Requirements	Advantages	Disadvantages	Examples
Less data required, but less sensitive to changing population health needs	Workforce-to-population ratios	Benchmarks of workforce density	Straightforward and less data required	Insensitive to changing population health needs	WHO workforce requirements for UHC²¹
	Service utilization/ service target approach	Current levels of service utilization, or future targets in service delivery	Simple but requires availability of data on service utilization	Utilization patterns not necessarily an indicator of met demand	Thailand study by Pagaiya et al.²²
More data and resources required, but more accurate in estimating need	Health needs approach	Sociodemographic and epidemiological data	More accurate assessment of health needs based on disease burden	Requires more data (e.g., burden of disease) which may not be readily available	Mental health workforce in LMICs²³
	Workload Indicators of Staffing Need	Workload pressure in a health facility against activity standards	Provides a strong basis for health workforce needs up to health facility level	Requires additional capacity and time to perform data collection and analysis	Philippines study by Aytona et al.²⁴
	No approach to guide planning; market forces determine health workforce quantity, skill mix, and distribution.

Abbreviations: LMICs, low- and middle-income countries; UHC, universal health coverage; WHO, World Health Organization.