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REVIEW

Public Health Rev

Volume 46 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/phrs.2025.1607091

This article is part of the Special Issue TRANSFORMATIVE PUBLIC HEALTH EDUCATION View all 20 articles

Frontiers: Public Health Reviews-special issue-transformative public health evidence

Mary Lynch Mary Lynch 1*Elizabeth Morrow Elizabeth Morrow 1Carmel Kelly Carmel Kelly 2Clodagh Killeen Clodagh Killeen 2
  • 1 Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin, Ireland
  • 2 Skillnet Ireland, Dublin, Ireland

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The aim of this scoping review is to explore the international evidence to identify the potential costs and gains of the development of a career pathway for Health Support Worker's (HSW's), the economic gains and benefits connected with continual professional development (CPD) and value for money.Scoping review following JBI methodology was conducted of peer-reviewed international literature using structured searches of electronic databases and grey literature (Sept-Nov 2023) applying economic methodological terms to capture economic evidence and perspectives on the issues.Seventeen papers were critically appraised and during the process of data extraction four key themes emerged: (1) Cost-benefits of employment and training (2) Organisational economic perspectives (3) Service economic perspectives and (4) Sector economic perspectives.This scoping review revealed a scarcity of economic evidence contributing to critical educational approaches, costs and benefits in development of career pathways for HSWs. Limited evidence was available on benefits of specific training programmes, and considerable gaps in the evidence to inform future investment. Recommendation is that future research should incorporate economic theory within evaluations to inform policy and practice.

    Keywords: economic, training programs, health support worker, career pathway, continuous professional development

    Received: 15 Jan 2024; Accepted: 03 Mar 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Lynch, Morrow, Kelly and Killeen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Mary Lynch, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin, Ireland

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