PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Rachel Deussom AU - Arush Lal AU - Diana Frymus AU - Kimberly Cole AU - Mary Ruth S Politico AU - Kelly Saldaña AU - Vamsi Vasireddy AU - Glenda Khangamwa AU - Wanda Jaskiewicz TI - Putting health workers at the centre of health system investments in COVID-19 and beyond AID - 10.1136/fmch-2021-001449 DP - 2022 May 01 TA - Family Medicine and Community Health PG - e001449 VI - 10 IP - 2 4099 - http://fmch.bmj.com/content/10/2/e001449.short 4100 - http://fmch.bmj.com/content/10/2/e001449.full SO - Fam Med Com Health2022 May 01; 10 AB - The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the implications of chronic underinvestment in health workforce development, particularly in resource-constrained health systems. Inadequate health workforce diversity, insufficient training and remuneration, and limited support and protection reduce health system capacity to equitably maintain health service delivery while meeting urgent health emergency demands. Applying the Health Worker Life Cycle Approach provides a useful conceptual framework that adapts a health labour market approach to outline key areas and recommendations for health workforce investment—building, managing and optimising—to systematically meet the needs of health workers and the systems they support. It also emphasises the importance of protecting the workforce as a cross-cutting investment, which is especially important in a health crisis like COVID-19. While the global pandemic has spurred intermittent health workforce investments required to immediately respond to COVID-19, applying this ‘lifecycle approach’ to guide policy implementation and financing interventions is critical to centering health workers as stewards of health systems, thus strengthening resilience to public health threats, sustainably responding to community needs and providing more equitable, patient-centred care.