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To address health systems challenges in limited-resource settings, global health initiatives, particularly the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, have seconded health workers to the public sector. Implementation considerations for secondment as a health workforce development strategy are not well documented. The purpose of this article is to present outcomes, best practices, and lessons learned from a President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief-funded secondment program in Botswana. Outcomes are documented across four World Health Organization health systems' building blocks. Best practices include documentation of joint stakeholder expectations, collaborative recruitment, and early identification of counterparts. Lessons learned include inadequate ownership, a two-tier employment system, and ill-defined position duration. These findings can inform program and policy development to maximize the benefit of health workforce secondment. Secondment requires substantial investment, and emphasis should be placed on high-level technical positions responsible for building systems, developing health workers, and strengthening government to translate policy into programs.

In 2007, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the joint United Nations agency program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) recommended voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) as an add-on strategy for HIV prevention. Fourteen priority countries were tasked with scaling-up VMMC services to 80% of HIV-negative men aged 15–49 years by 2016, representing a combined target of 20 million circumcisions. By December 2012, approximately 3 million procedures had been conducted. Within the following year, there was marked improvement in the pace of the scale-up. During 2013, the total number of circumcisions performed nearly doubled, with approximately 6 million total circumcisions conducted by the end of the year, reaching 30% of the initial target. The purpose of this review article was to apply a systems thinking approach, using the WHO health systems building blocks as a framework to examine the factors influencing the scale-up of the VMMC programs from 2008–2013. Facilitators that accelerated the VMMC program scale-up included: country ownership; sustained political will; service delivery efficiencies, such as task shifting and task sharing; use of outreach and mobile services; disposable, prepackaged VMMC kits; external funding; and a standardized set of indicators for VMMC. A low demand for the procedure has been a major barrier to achieving circumcision targets, while weak supply chain management systems and the lack of adequate financial resources with a heavy reliance on donor support have also adversely affected scale-up. Health systems strengthening initiatives and innovations have progressively improved VMMC service delivery, but an understanding of the contextual barriers and the facilitators of demand for the procedure is critical in reaching targets. There is a need for countries implementing VMMC programs to share their experiences more frequently to identify and to enhance best practices by other programs.

Jenny H Ledikwe,1,2,* Robert O Nyanga,1,* Jaclyn Hagon,2 Jessica S Grignon,1,2 Mulamuli Mpofu,1 Bazghina-werq Semo1,2 1International Training and Education Center for Health, Botswana, Gaborone, Botswana; 2Department of Global Health, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA*These authors are joint first authorsAbstract: In 2007, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the joint United Nations agency program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) recommended voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) as an add-on strategy for HIV prevention. Fourteen priority countries were tasked with scaling-up VMMC services to 80% of HIV-negative men aged 15–49 years by 2016, representing a combined target of 20 million circumcisions. By December 2012, approximately 3 million procedures had been conducted. Within the following year, there was marked improvement in the pace of the scale-up. During 2013, the total number of circumcisions performed nearly doubled, with approximately 6 million total circumcisions conducted by the end of the year, reaching 30% of the initial target. The purpose of this review article was to apply a systems thinking approach, using the WHO health systems building blocks as a framework to examine the factors influencing the scale-up of the VMMC programs from 2008–2013. Facilitators that accelerated the VMMC program scale-up included: country ownership; sustained political will; service delivery efficiencies, such as task shifting and task sharing; use of outreach and mobile services; disposable, prepackaged VMMC kits; external funding; and a standardized set of indicators for VMMC. A low demand for the procedure has been a major barrier to achieving circumcision targets, while weak supply chain management systems and the lack of adequate financial resources with a heavy reliance on donor support have also adversely affected scale-up. Health systems strengthening initiatives and innovations have progressively improved VMMC service delivery, but an understanding of the contextual barriers and the facilitators of demand for the procedure is critical in reaching targets. There is a need for countries implementing VMMC programs to share their experiences more frequently to identify and to enhance best practices by other programs.Keywords: voluntary medical male circumcision, HIV prevention, health systems strengthening, Africa, facilitators, barriers

Jessica S Grignon,1,2 Jenny H Ledikwe,1,2 Ditsapelo Makati,2 Robert Nyangah,2 Baraedi W Sento,2 Bazghina-werq Semo1,2 1Department of Global Health, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA; 2International Training and Education Center for Health, Gaborone, Botswana Abstract: To address health systems challenges in limited-resource settings, global health initiatives, particularly the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, have seconded health workers to the public sector. Implementation considerations for secondment as a health workforce development strategy are not well documented. The purpose of this article is to present outcomes, best practices, and lessons learned from a President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief-funded secondment program in Botswana. Outcomes are documented across four World Health Organization health systems' building blocks. Best practices include documentation of joint stakeholder expectations, collaborative recruitment, and early identification of counterparts. Lessons learned include inadequate ownership, a two-tier employment system, and ill-defined position duration. These findings can inform program and policy development to maximize the benefit of health workforce secondment. Secondment requires substantial investment, and emphasis should be placed on high-level technical positions responsible for building systems, developing health workers, and strengthening government to translate policy into programs. Keywords: human resources, health policy, health worker, HIV/AIDS, PEPFAR