Overview

Strengthening the health workforce is a critical priority to improve the resilience of health systems. In this article we consider how a European Health Union can help support health workforce development. It shows that greater cooperation between the European Union (EU) and Member States within a European Health Union can help to: promote voluntary collaboration on training and life-long learning; support retention strategies; and improve health workforce planning, forecasting and monitoring. It remains important that the EU takes stock of the positive and negative effects of inter-and intra- regional health worker mobility to safeguard health workers and the performance of health systems.