When staff members are overworked, unmotivated, or unskilled, implementing activities to strengthen pharmaceutical management is difficult, if not impossible. The SPS Program uses a capacity-building approach that involves pre-service and in-service activities and interventions that focus on both the people doing the jobs and the institutions responsible for training current and future health workers.

RPM Plus initiated a long-term south-to-south strategy to address the limited capacity of local institutions with expertise in pharmaceutical management and the dearth of people with skills to provide technical assistance. For example, we helped create a Regional Technical Resource Collaboration for Pharmaceutical Management housed at Makerere University in Uganda, which brings together developing country academic institutions that serve as regional sources of expertise. The Collaboration has proven to be an efficient way to build institutional capacity. We also revised existing training courses to include training-of-trainer components, so material can be more easily disseminated.

Another SPS initiative is the monitoring-training-planning (MTP) approach to strengthen institutional and human resource capacity. MTP gives local staff the skills and tools to identify, analyze, and tackle problems in their institutions by mobilizing their own resources and collaborating with colleagues.