universal health coverage (uHC), part of the post-2015 development agenda, is an aspiration widely shared across the world and promoted by numerous international organizations.In 2012 the united Nations General assembly adopted a resolution for uHC, which urges governments to move towards 'providing all people with access to affordable, quality healthcare services'. the World Health Organization (WHO), which has a leading role in supporting countries to respond to the challenge of uHC and monitors its implementation, describes global support for uHC as gathering momentum.1Margaret Chan, Director-General of WHO has said: I regard universal health coverage as the single most powerful concept that public health has to offer. It is inclusive. It unifies services and delivers them in a comprehensive and integrated way, based on primary health care.One of the challenges of uHC is the global shortage of all types of health workers, which has been a concern for many countries and forms a central plank of the work of WHO and many other global and regional organizations such as the World Bank, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Clinton Foundation. WHO's strategy on Human resources for Health (HrH)2 seeks to ensure that all people have equitable access to an adequately trained, skilled and supportive health workforce, in order to attain the highest possible level of health. the third Global Forum on HrH in Brazil in 2013 resulted in the bolstering of political commitments on HrH, based on technical evidence, in order to accelerate progress towards uHC, and it began the process of developing a global strategy.these are crucial developments, but despite uHC being a major public health concern confronting the world and the significant global effort to address health workforce concerns, the place of the public health workforce seems invisible in these discussions. this commentary presents a brief review of the public health workforce in the context of the uHC and HrH agendas, together with a consideration of the opportunities for greater intersection, and therefore greater success.UNIVERSAL HEALTH COVERAGEuHC - which is not a new concept - has been broadly defined as all people having access to needed service of appropriate quality without suffering financial hardship. the definition covers both individual and population health services - including promotion, prevention, acute treatment, rehabilitation and palliation.uHC is consistent with the definition of health in the WHO Constitution and the Declaration of alma ata,3 and has been more recently articulated in the Health Systems Knowledge Network of the Commission for Social Determinants of Health,4 and the World Health reports on renewal of Primary Care5 and Health Financing.6In practice, however, the differing understandings of uHC have either led to a focus on health insurance, or on delivery of individual health services. the monitoring indicators developed by WHO and the World Bank emphasize financial protection and impoverishment on the one hand, and service coverage for a variety of 'vertical' programmes, such as maternal and child health, on the other, albeit including some population-level health services.7 the financing and delivery of population-level health interventions seem to be largely sitting in the background, and the issue of public health system preparedness and public health system strengthening are largely absent from the discourse.HUMAN RESOURCES FOR HEALTHthe global HrH conversation has been concerned with addressing health worker migration, and promoting improved workforce planning and educational development at the national level. Labour market studies are increasingly being undertaken as part of understanding the dynamics of health workforce recruitment and retention.However, this workstream has some gaps. It is largely focused on countries experiencing HrH crisis - i.e. insufficient numbers of health workers to deliver healthcare. …