Countries across Europe and globally are making serious efforts to address their health and care workforce challenges. Given the COVID-19 pandemic, they have been exacerbated to critical levels. Health and care workers are continually exposed to stress, burnout, and violence. Governments are yet to find the best solutions to workforce shortages and mal- distribution, as well as investing in developing their skills and motivating them, apart from merely attracting them.

Growing migration and mobility flows add further challenges, that reinforce health system inequalities globally and that may also create specific threats in Europe and the European Union, in particular to Eastern countries. Gender-based discrimination and violence in the healthcare workforce is another major global problem, that even exacerbated during COVID-19 pandemic.

This mid-term conference sets the focus on investing in healthcare workforce governance. The EUPHA section Health Workforce Research (EUPHA-HWR), in collaboration with the WHO Regional Office for Europe/ Programme on Human Resources for Health and the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, seeks to provide a platform for knowledge exchange across the healthcare workforce community and to enhance dialogue between research, policy and practice, with a focus on equity, inclusion and mental health and wellbeing of healthcare workers.