The following article was posted on the Health Policy Platform (HPP) which I thought would be of interest to colleagues in this Working Group. The article is titled: 'Needs-based planning for the oral health workforce - development and application of a simulation model' and presents some interesting health workforce planning/forecasting options for currently under-represented healthcare areas. What do you think of the work they are doing in Ireland? Do you have similar experiences in your country and how could current planning and forecasting be expanded include a holistic approach to all healthcare staff and systems? 

Abstract: The World Health Organization’s global strategy on human resources for health includes an objective to align investment in human resources for health with the current and future needs of the population. Although oral health is a key indicator of overall health and wellbeing, and oral diseases are the most common noncommunicable diseases affecting half the world’s population, oral health workforce planning efforts have been limited to simplistic target dentist-population or constant services-population ratios which do not account for levels of and changes in population need. Against this backdrop, our aim was to develop and operationalise an oral health needs-based workforce planning simulation tool.