Introduction

The provision of health care is "human resource intensive," making it particularly important that a health care system has the right providers in the right places, with the right skills. Supportive supervision should be a critical part of achieving the objective of excellent health care provision.

However, there is a growing body of experience and evidence from developing countries showing that the traditional visiting (or distance) supervisor model is generally not effective. There is also growing evidence about the success of alternate supervision models (such as site based self-assessment and peer review). This led the Capacity Project to sponsor a workshop for a number of experts in this area to review the evidence and think creatively about how to improve supportive supervision in the health sector.

The Capacity Project sponsored this workshop on Tuesday, October 25, 2005, at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, DC, for participants from USAID/W, USAID funded projects and partner agencies and other interested groups such as the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). This CD documents highlights from the presentations and discussions and is intended to capture the ideas and recommendations that emerged from this workshop and to encourage, inform and support further innovation in the area of supervision.

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This CD was produced by IntraHealth International for the Capacity Project and was made possible through support provided by the U.S. Agency for International Development. The views expressed in this CD do not necessarily reflect the views of IntraHealth International/the Capacity Project, the United States Agency for International Development or the United States Government.