About Us

Countries worldwide struggle with the education, employment, retention, and migration of health and care workers. Significant gaps exist in the domestic legal and policy environment that need to uphold their rights. The Health and Care Worker (HCW) Policy Lab aims to address this information gap and support the implementation of the Global Health and Care Worker Compact.

HOW WE GOT STARTED

Initiated in 2024, the HCW Policy Lab gathers and shares legal documents from more than 190 countries, helping states establish and implement laws and policies in line with the Global Health and Care Worker Compact. It is an open, living global public resource that shares primary source documents and reports on the global status of health and care worker laws and policies. It enables independent analysis to enable comparison across countries on all areas of the Compact.

THE WEBSITE

We collect and update the database with laws and policies from all over the world. These documents are organized into one of ten categories, which is aligned with the 10 main substantive elements of the Global Health and Care Worker Compact.

This website includes :

• A growing reference library of law and policy documents
• Summaries of international legal instruments that form the foundation of the Compact
• Summaries of valuable tools and guidelines across all Compact areas to assist implementation
• A national assessment tool, enabling stakeholders to report and assess their country-specific status in adopting the Compact’s standard and recommendations (coming soon)

THE COMPACT FRAMEWORK

The Compact itself details the robust international legal framework that exists for supporting health and care workers and safeguarding their rights. The Compact articulates the global norms and standards across 11 substantive topics across five themes: