Governing the Health Workforce Across Time: From Forecasting to Capability and Learning Abstract Health workforce planning faces a structural problem of time.

Drawing on normative backcasting, capability and complexity, this talk explores how health workforce planning can sustain long-term direction across short political cycles while adapting as circumstances change. Planning begins with the health outcomes and service model we want to achieve, identifies what the system must be capable of doing, and works backwards to the workforce, technology, organisation and governance required to deliver it.

Informed by years of engagement with healthcare systems around the world, including the NHS, this talk will ground these ideas in the practical realities of workforce planning and reform. Because the future cannot be predicted precisely, implementation must then operate as a learning system: testing, learning and adapting while maintaining long-term direction. The challenge is therefore not to predict the workforce of the future, but to build the governance and capability to create it.

Speakers

Cris Scotter - Policy Advisor for Human Resources for Health at the WHO Regional Office for Europe.

Professor Brian Castellani - Sociology

Professor Barbara Bechter - Business School