This book, published by the Western Pacific Office of the World Health Organization, serves as guidelines for applying an interactive approach to health management development. This approach combines the development of human resources, management systems, and policies. It focuses on the involvement of national staff in the evaluation of their work and professional practices. Their participation centers on establishing more effective policies and procedures and on improving their managerial skills. This manual targets mainly national facilitators who are trained to promote management development. They initiate, prepare, conduct, and follow-up on national activities in management development as well as continue their duties as senior health officials. The handbook's introduction addresses the rationale for this integrated approach to health management development, the approach itself, the workshop as a system, the role of national facilitators, and the development process and its measures of success. Part II examines the training protocols, each of which includes the outline of each workshop session, a lesson plan for each session, and notes for the facilitator. These protocols are district level management and planning, supervision of health personnel, management of the drug supply support system, and health sector financial planning. Part III is a module for workshop leaders entitled Training National Facilitators for Health Management. The annexes include a list of national facilitators for the Western Pacific region, a checklist of facilitator's responsibilities, an example of a workshop schedule, facilitator guidelines on managing a group process and on conducting a workshop session, self-assessment for managers of health care, a glossary, an exercise in terminology and team building, a technical report on district level management, and applications of the approach in South Pacific Island nations.
