This thematic brief accompanies the Working for Health 2022–2030 Action Plan, providing a rationale for the related actions of the Working for Health progression model (see Annex). This brief aims to inform Member States, non-state actors and other stakeholders vested in implementing the Action ...Plan to consider the context of planning and financing for the health and care workforce, including the relevant policy landscape, key challenges and future directions.
In doing so, it provides an expanded exploration of the themes beyond what is provided in the Action Plan Itself, and reflects the topical issues and considerations that shaped its design, including those issues identified in the World Health Assembly Resolution WHA74.14 to protect, safeguard and invest in the health and care workforce. The importance of these themes was again emphasized at the Seventy-fifth WHA, when Resolution WHA75.17: Human resources for health, was co-sponsored by over 100 Member States, calling for the adoption and implementation of the Working for Health 2022–2030 Action Plan and utilization of the related Global Health and Care Worker Compact.
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Climate change is the single biggest health threat facing humanity, and health professionals worldwide are already responding to the health harms caused by this unfolding crisis.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that to avert catastrophic health impacts and prevent... millions of climate change-related deaths, the world must limit temperature rise to 1.5°C. Past emissions have already made a certain level of global temperature rise and other changes to the climate inevitable. Global heating of even 1.5°C is not considered safe, however; every additional tenth of a degree of warming will take a serious toll on people’s lives and health.
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Health in All Policies: A Guide for State and Local Governments was created by the Public Health Institute, the California Department of Public Health, and the American Public Health Association in response to growing interest in using collaborative approaches to improve population health by embedd...ing health considerations into decision-making processes across a broad array of sectors. The Guide draws heavily on the experiences of the California Health in All Policies Task Force and incorporates information from the published and gray literature and interviews with people across the country.
The guide was developed through funding from the American Public Health Association and The California Endowment.
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Policy Note: Thailand Health Systems in Transition
By 2002, Universal Health Coverage was achieved through three public insurance schemes: the Civil Servant Medical Benefit Scheme (CSMBS) for civil servants and their dependents, Social Health Insurance (SHI) for formal sector employees, and the U...niversal Coverage Scheme (UCS) for the remainder of the population.
The establishment of these three schemes has changed the way health care is financed. A supply-led system, under which all Ministry of Public Health (MOPH) health facilities received an annual budget allocation from the MOPH, has now been completely replaced by a system in which the three public purchasers - separated through a purchaser-provider split - manage a demand-led system of financing.
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This document adopts a health determinants framework for examining the evidence related to women’s poor mental health. From this perspective, public policy including economic policy, socio-cultural and environmental factors, community and social support, stressors and life events, personal behavio...ur and skills, and availability and access to health services, are all seen to exercise a role in determining women’s mental health status. Similarly, when considering the differences between women and men, a gender approach has been used. While this does not exclude biological or sex differences, it considers the critical roles that social and cultural factors and unequal power relations between men and women play in promoting or impeding mental health. Such inequalities create, maintain and exacerbate exposure to risk factors that endanger women’s mental health, and are most graphically illustrated in the significantly different rates of depression between men and women, poverty and its impact, and the phenomenal prevalence of violence against women.
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The framework responds to the demand from Member States and partners for guidance on how the health sector and its operational basis in health systems can systematically and effectively address the challenges increasingly presented by climate variability and change. This framework has been designed ...in light of the increasing evidence of climate change and its associated health risks (1); global, regional and national policy mandates to protect population health (2); and a rapidly emerging body of practical experience in building health resilience to climate change (3).
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Current evidence that the climate is changing is overwhelming. Impacts of climate change and variability are being observed: more intense heat-waves, fires and floods; and increased prevalence of food- water- and vector-borne diseases. Climate change will put pressure on environmental and health det...erminants, such as food safety, air pollution and water quantity and quality. A climate-resilient future depends fundamentally on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Limiting warming to below 2 °C requires transformational technological, institutional, political and behavioural changes: the foundations for this are laid out in the Paris Agreement of December 2015. The health sector can lead by example, shifting to environmentally friendly practices and minimizing its carbon emissions. A climate-resilient future will increasingly depend on managing and reducing climate change risks to protect health. In the near term, this can be enhanced by including climate change in national health programming and creating climate-resilient health systems.
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The Compendium brings together for the first time key consensus-based policy recommendations and guidance to improve the delivery of proven interventions to women and children. The user-friendly format incorporates icons and tabs to present key health-related policies that support the delivery of es...sential RMNCH interventions. It also includes multisectoral policies on the economic, social, technological and environmental factors that influence health outcomes and service delivery. The Policy Compendium is a companion document to the Essential Interventions, Commodities and Guidelines for RMNCH.
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Mental disorders are a leading cause of the global burden of disease, and the provision of mental health services in developing countries remains very limited and far from equitable. Using the Creditor Reporting System, we estimate the amounts and patterns of development assistance for global mental... health (DAMH) between 2007 and 2013. This allows us to examine how well international donors have responded to calls by global mental health advocates to scale up evidence-based services. Although DAMH did increase between 2007 and 2013, it remains low both in absolute terms and as a proportion of total development assistance for health (DAH). The average annual DAMH between 2007 and 2013 was US$133.57 million, and the proportion of DAH attributed to mental health is less than 1%. Approximately 48% of total DAMH was for humanitarian assistance, education, and civil services. More annual DAMH was channelled into the nonpublic sector than the public sector. Despite an expanding body of evidence suggesting that sustainable mental health care can be effectively integrated into existing health systems at relatively low cost, mental health has not received significant development assistance.
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The 2019-2023 Strategy for UNU-IIGH, developed in
2018, built on UNU-IIGH’s strategic advantage and
position vis-à-vis the UN and global health ecosystem.
The Strategy set a goal to advance evidencebased policy on key issues related to sustainable
development and health and shifted the Instit...ute’s
body of work from investigator-driven global health
projects to three priority-driven, policy-relevant pillars
of work, each reflecting UNU-IIGH’s unique value
position.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, the
Institute adapted and reprioritised its areas of work
while continuing to deliver on the main strategic
objectives of translating evidence to policy, generating
policy-relevant analyses on gender and health, and
strengthening capacity for local decision making
especially in the Global South.
The new strategic plan encompasses four work packages:
1. Gender Equality and Intersectionality: through this work, we will aim to improve the quality of health care through a human-centred approach, by ensuring the health system is responsive to the needs of structurally excluded individuals and communities; and by advancing a positive and enabling environment for the frontline health workforce—e.g. addressing the experience of gender-based violence.
2. Power and Accountability: through this work, we will catalyse equitable shifts in power and address key accountability deficits that prevent the equitable and effective functioning of the global health system and prevent adequate responsiveness to the needs of states and populations in the Global South.
3. Digital Health Governance: through this work, we will address the colonial legacies and power asymmetries that negatively impact robust digital health governance, identify ways to strengthen health data governance with a particular focus on SRHR and promote diversity in technology design and development.
4. Climate Justice and Determinants of Health: through this work we will leverage UNU-IIGH's position within the UN and network of UNU institutes, network experts, practitioners, policy-makers, and academics to advance evidence-based policy on the different dimensions of the climate emergency and its impact on health.
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The overall objective of the framework is to support WHO and Members States in meaningful engagement of people living with NCDs, and mental health and neurological conditions to co-create and enhance related policies, programmes and services. This framework will contribute to advancing understanding..., knowledge and action on meaningful engagement and related participatory approaches from an evolving evidence base. It provides practical guidance and actions for transitioning from intention to action to operationalize meaningful engagement.
The aim of the framework is to guide people working at WHO and in Member States in ensuring meaningful engagement with individuals with lived experience. WHO will advocate for, provide technical assistance and operationalize implementation at its three levels (headquarters, regional and country offices) and will support Member States in implementation at national level through established processes and procedures.
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This publication presents the Agenda for the Americas on Health, Environment, and Climate Change 2021–2030 (the Agenda). The Agenda is a call to action to the health sector to lead the charge to address environmental determinants of health in the Americas. The Pan American Health Organization (PAH...O) will work with Member States to achieve its goal and objective to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages using a sustainable and equitable approach that places a priority on reducing health inequity. The Agenda has been developed under the umbrella of the WHO Global Strategy on Health, Environment, and Climate Change, and builds upon the commitments set forth in the Sustainable Health Agenda for the Americas 2018–2030 and the PAHO Strategic Plan 2020–2025. The Agenda was developed in consultation with the Technical Advisory Group and through a consensus-driven decision-making process with Member States during the 2019–2020 period. Looking toward the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 3, the Agenda focuses on: improving the performance of environmental public health programs and institutions; fostering environmentally resilient and sustainable health systems; and promoting environmentally healthy and resilient cities and communities. Its implementation will be context-specific, based on the needs and realities of the countries. It will benefit countries and territories by promoting good governance practices, strengthening the leadership and coordination roles of the health sector, fostering cross-sectoral action, focusing on primary prevention, and enhancing evidence and communication. It will facilitate access to human, technical, and financial resources necessary to address environmental determinants of health and ensure that the Region is fully engaged in global health, environment, and climate change processes and agreements. The objective of the Agenda is to strengthen the capacity of health actors in the health and non-health sectors to address and adapt to environmental determinants of health (EDHs), prioritizing populations living in conditions of vulnerability, in order to meet Outcome 18 of the PAHO Strategic Plan 2020–2025 directly and several other outcomes of the Plan indirectly. To address and adapt to the challenges of EDHs in the Region, an integrated and evidence-informed approach within the health sector and across sectors will be needed, one enabled, and supported by good governance practices, adequate management mechanisms, high-level political will, and adequate human, technical, technological, and financial resources.
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Childhood obesity is a major public health problem globally, which could undermine progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Prevention is recognized as the most efficient means of curbing the epidemic; however, given the scale of the problem and the many children who need profes...sional support due to the severity of the disease and/or obesity-related complications, health systems all over Europe must take steps to develop obesity management systems. The aim of this project was to assess the response of health care delivery systems in 19 countries in the WHO European Region to the childhood obesity epidemic.
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The Panorama Perspectives: Conversations on Planetary Health report series aims to inspire new thinking, conversations, and engagement with planetary health and other integrated concepts. Collaboration and open knowledge sharing across sectors are necessary to solve the complex global health and dev...elopment problems of today. These reports are intended as practical tools, presenting actionable opportunities to advance planetary health.Each report expands on knowledge gathered from many sources, including analysis of publicly available reports and data; forums and events; group discussions; and individual conversations
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To understand the patterns of Rwanda’s achievements in health development, it is important to explore how Rwanda addresses the Social Determinants of Health (SDH) particularly those related to routine conditions in which people are born, live and work. It is in this particular context that a case ...study on Rwanda’s Performance in Addressing Social Determinants of Health was conducted by the Rwanda Ministry of Health, with technical and financial support from the World Health Organization (WHO). The overall goal of the exercise was to document Rwanda's recent initiatives that contribute to the advancements of the Rio Political Declaration on Social Determinants of Health.
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Updated with information on Ebola virus disease and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus
A wide variety of health events ranging in severity may occur related to air transport, requiring different responses or, perhaps, no response at all. The target audience for this guidance document incl...udes the national focal points (NFP) for the IHR and public health authorities at PoE, as well as national aviation regulatory authorities, airport operators and personnel, aircraft operators, air crew and other stakeholders involved in air transport and emergency preparedness and response to public health events
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The ICF Practical Manual provides information on how to use ICF. Anyone interested in learning more about use of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF, WHO 2001) may benefit from reading this Practical Manual. The ICF is presently used in many different contexts... and for many different purposes around the world. It can be used as a tool for statistical, research, clinical, social policy, or educational purposes and applied, not only in the health sector, but also in sectors such as insurance, social security, labour, education, economics, policy or legislation development, and the environment. People interested in functioning and disability and seeking ways to apply the ICF should find the contents of this Practical Manual helpful. The Practical Manual provides a range of information on how to apply ICF in various situations. It is built on the acquired expertise, knowledge and judgement of users in their respective areas of work, and is designed to be used alongside the ICF itself, which remains the primary reference.
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An Overview of Current Evidence with Recommendations for Strengthening Community Health Worker Programs to Accelerate Progress in Achieving the Health-related Millennium Development Goals