When I first heard the sentence “ethical recruitment is a pathway to reinvestment,” I was struck by its simplicity and fundamental truth. If international recruitment of healthcare professionals does not lead to reinvestment in source countries, it cannot be ethical because it is neither fair nor sustainable. I don’t think anyone engaging in a serious and reasoned discussion could argue otherwise.
The question then becomes: how do we turn that principle into action?
To give due credit, that sentence was part of TruMerit CEO Peter Preziosi’s opening remarks at the panel discussion on “Translating Ethical Recruitment into Reinvestment: Innovation and partnership models in global healthcare workforce mobility.” Sponsored by TruMerit, the panel was part of the U.S. Global Conference organized by the African Diaspora Nursing Alliance, an emerging movement that brings together the voices of several African diaspora associations, and it was aptly titled “Voices of Change: Translating Innovation into Action for Global Health.”
The event took place at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing in Baltimore, MD, August 21 and 22, 2026. There was an attentive crowd of nursing leaders, educators, students, and policymakers gathered for the discussion.
The panel brought together experts from several sectors, each offering different perspectives about ethical recruitment of healthcare professionals. The discussion included the experiences of nurses and midwives in Ghana and across Africa, initiatives led by a certified ethical recruiter, employers’ responsibilities toward internationally educated professionals, Health Resources and Service Administration’s (HRSA) role in the regulation of the U.S. health workforce, and the major challenges and opportunities at the global level.
The richness and diversity of the subjects discussed meant that the most important topics were covered. There is also an extensive body of research and thought leadership offering potential solutions. Collectively, these ideas could meaningfully improve the situation even though “there is no magic bullet,” as some say. But we all know that significant work remains. We must strengthen educational systems, create meaningful employment opportunities, make bilateral labor negotiations and agreements more equitable and balanced, establish clear rules for ethical recruitment practices, and much more.
The Alliance for Ethical International Recruitment Practices, which I have the honor of directing, is a great example of how to involve private sector recruitment firms, in a voluntary way, in respecting a set of ethical values and conditions. Its major challenge, though, like many other promising solutions we hear about, is scale.
In a globalized world, for an international phenomenon like this, solutions of a global scale are needed. Even bilateral labor agreements and mobility partnerships, despite their merits and potential, have serious limitations due to their case-by-case focus and lack of multi-country approaches.
Recognizing the WHO’S leadership on this issue, including its Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel and its Expert Advisory Group, I believe that a permanent, dedicated forum is needed to provide concrete guidance and achieve multilateral commitments for its implementation, scalability, and funding. It is essential to involve all major stakeholders, including governments from sending and receiving countries, the private sector representing employers and recruiters, representatives of healthcare professionals, and international organizations.
The forum would need a realistic but ambitious, clear, and solutions-oriented mandate to make sure it would produce results, not just conversation. There are many examples of other similar initiatives with successful deliverables, such as the Global Refugee Forum or the UN International Migration Review Forum. This is not unrealistic. What is needed is leadership and support from governments that, today, are benefiting from unfair externalities of a market that is unregulated and whose players don’t have the same negotiating capacity.
Ethical recruitment must become the market standard, not the exception. When it does, reinvestment can move from principle to practice and become reality.
Rodrigo Gouveia, TruMerit’s Chief Global Affairs Officer, was recently an invited keynote speaker at the National Association of Indian Nurses of America’s 5th Clinical Excellence and Leadership Conference, held in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. In the following piece, he shares insights into his keynote presentation and his takeaways from the conference.