Enacting occupational therapy workforce strategic developments requires strengthening the capacity of current and future professional leaders at the local, national and international level to promote workforce situational analyses, action plans, and monitoring. This involves assuming a leading role in profession-specific workforce development and serving as skilled advocates and participants in broader health workforce policy and planning.

Problem and opportunity

Systematic workforce development requires national and local efforts, including situational assessments, action planning, implementation and monitoring activities. To lead and promote coordinated workforce development initiatives, it is integral to develop a skilled group of occupational therapy workforce leaders.

Identified weaknesses ^{9 16 17 23}

Multi-year or participatory occupational therapy workforce strengthening plans are not found in the occupational therapy workforce literature.^{9 17 23}
Structured programmes for building the capacity of occupational therapists to be workforce development leaders are not documented in occupational therapy literature.¹⁷
Many broader health workforce developments are not inclusive of occupational therapy, including the current WHO Global Strategy on Human Resources for Health;¹⁹ and major international workforce databases / repositoria.²³ Occupational therapy is also not a specified occupation within the current International Standard Classification of Occupations.²³ Such omissions impede higher-levels analyses occupational therapy within the broader health workforce.

Opportunities for advancement of occupational therapy

Knowledge and tools germane to the broader field of health human resources have been developed for the broader health workforce field^{19 30} which may be applicable to the occupational therapy field; however, capacity-building programmes need to promote these and other workforce leadership competencies.
Occupational therapy leaders or representatives are strong advocates and agents of change for the development of the profession and can use their leadership skills in addressing workforce issues if given workforce knowledge, tools, and competencies.

Objectives

Long-Term Goals (three cycles of four years)

Occupational therapy workforce national or regional situation assessments and action planning are in place and result in significant, documented developments of the occupational therapy workforce.
Cross-professional international, national or regional health workforce plans, activities or structural developments explicitly include occupational therapists as targets with specified workforce strengthening activities.

Short-Terms Goals (one cycle of four years)

Capacity building and leadership development programmes with a focus on occupational therapy workforce development provide training for current and future occupational therapy leaders, including emergent leaders from LMICs.
Profession-specific, data-based and participatory situational analysis are initiated or completed, followed by action planning.
Occupational therapist workforce leaders or representatives actively participate in cross-professional local, national, regional, or international health workforce developments.

Specific actions and tasks

The operationalization of the strategic direction revolves around two main, complementary activities: first, developing training programmes for building capacity among occupational therapy workforce leaders; followed by actions to undertake situational assessments and strengthen the occupational therapy workforce.

Promote capacity-building programmes for local, national, and cross-national occupational therapy workforce leaders and advocates.

a. Build the capacity of professional leaders and advocates to participate in situational analyses and formulations of health workforce policies and plans.

b. Foster the capacity of professional leaders and advocates to contribute to the development of research agendas and use evidence for guiding profession-specific workforce development activities.

c. Include health workforce content (e.g., frameworks, policies, management practices, research, and strategies) in the curriculum of higher-level training and education programmes for occupational therapy leaders.

Occupational therapy workforce leaders foster profession-specific situation analysis and workforce strengthening plans as well as participate in cross-professional workforce policy, planning, and programmatic developments.

a. Develop occupational therapy workforce leaders or agents of change to promote regular situation analyses of the occupational therapy workforce, framed within the backdrop of other health system and health workforce developments.

b. Involve occupational therapy workforce leaders in initiating the process, convening the stakeholders, and contributing to the development, implementation, monitoring, and updates of action plans on the strengthening of occupational therapy workforce, within the backdrop of other health system and workforce developments.

c. Promote the participation of occupational therapy workforce leaders in local, national, and international cross-professional endeavours on the strengthening of the health workforce.

d. Disseminate workforce data, evidence, and occupational therapy workforce developments to stakeholders at the local and global level for informing strengthening activities.