Reducing the global suicide mortality rate by a third by 2030 is a target of both the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the WHO Global Mental Health Action Plan. However, an impediment to meeting... this goal is the fact that suicide and suicide attempts remain illegal in at least 23 countries worldwide. Decriminalization of suicide and suicide attempts represents one critical step governments can take in their efforts to prevent suicide. The WHO Policy Brief on the health aspects of decriminalization of suicide and suicide attempts cites data and research to make a case for decriminalizing suicide globally. It also includes case examples from countries that have recently decriminalized suicide and suicide attempts — Guyana and Pakistan, Singapore,— providing important insights to policy-makers, legislators, parliamentarians and other decision-makers.
more
To survive and thrive, children and adolescents need good health, adequate nutrition, security, safety and a supportive clean environment, opportunities for early learning and education, responsive relationships and connectedness, and opportunities ...for personal autonomy and self-realization. To promote their health and wellbeing, children and adolescents need support from parents, families, communities, surrounding institutions, and an enabling environment. Scheduled well care visits provide a critical opportunity for support of individual children, adolescents, parents, caregivers and families promote health and wellbeing. This guidance on scheduled child and adolescent well-care visits is the first in a series of publications to support the operationalization of the comprehensive agenda for child and adolescent health and wellbeing. It provides guidance on what is required to strengthen health systems and services to ensure healthy growth and development of all children and adolescents, and to support their parents and caregivers.
The guidance focuses on scheduled routine contacts with providers to support children and adolescents in their growth and developmental trajectory, as well as their primary caregivers and families. It outlines the rationale and objectives of well care visits and proposes a minimum 17 scheduled visits; describes the expected tasks during a contact; provides age-specific content to be address during each contact; and proposes actions to build on and maximize existing opportunities and resources.
more
The WHO document "Integrating the prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases in HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and sexual and reproductive health programmes: implementation guidance" provides a fra...mework for integrating noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) into existing health programs for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis (TB), and sexual and reproductive health (SRH). It emphasizes the importance of a people-centered approach to enhance healthcare accessibility and efficiency, especially in low-resource settings. The document outlines strategies for strengthening policy, financing, capacity building, and health system infrastructure. It offers actionable steps, tools, and case studies to support countries in reducing the burden of NCDs through integrated, holistic care within primary health services.
more
The desired impact of the OH JPA is a world better able to prevent, predict, detect and
respond to health threats and improve the health ...ss="attribute-to-highlight medbox">of humans, animals, plants and the
environment while contributing to sustainable development. The OH JPA aims to work
towards this vision in the following way:
• Provide a framework for action and propose a set of activities the four organizations
can offer together to advance and sustainably scale up One Health.
• Provide upstream policy and legislative advice and technical assistance, to help
set national targets and priorities across the sectors for the development and
implementation of One Health legislation, initiatives and programmes.
• Take stock of existing cross-sectoral global and regional initiatives around One
Health, identify and advise on synergies and overlaps, and support coordination.
• Mobilize and make better use of resources across sectors, disciplines and
stakeholders.
• The OH JPA is guided by a theory of change and makes use of One Health principles
to strengthen collaboration, communication, capacity building and coordination
more
Effective implementation of WHO PEN, combined with other very cost effective population-wide interventions, will help even resource constrained settings to attain the global voluntary targets related to reduction ...medbox">of premature mortality and preventionof heart attacks and strokes.
more
This report describes the work done by WHO from January 2015 up to the end of December 2016 to address the long-term issues of survivor care, health...>-systems strengthening and research.
more
This study of Adolescent Boys and Young Men highlights the importance of engaging adolescent boys and young men in sexual and reproductive health a...nd rights (srhr) and gender equality. This paper establishes a conceptual framework for engaging adolescent boys and young men. It reviews current research on boys’ and young men’s specific risks and realities in relation to their general health status, violence, sexuality and sexual and reproductive health, media violence, sexual exploitation, and other vulnerabilities.
more
The objective of the evaluation is to understand whether the CHW program has achieved its intended objectives, thus contributing to the overarching objectives defined in the HSSP III of improving th...e health status of the population by “Ensuring universal accessibility of quality health services for all Rwandans”.
This evaluation has focused on CHWs, who are selected, trained and deployed by the MoH to deliver a defined set of tasks at community level. CHWs are the central element of the Community Health Policy and of the community health strategy plan (CHSP) of the MoH.
more
(Health Systems in Transition, Vol. 4, No. 3, 2014)
This compendium collates current tools and resources on quality improvement developed by the WHO Service Delivery and Safety Department and provides examples of how the tools and resources have been applied in country settings. The target audience f...or this document are ministries of health, facility quality improvement teams, researchers and development agencies. WHO technical programmes, regional and country offices can also use the document in their technical cooperation work with the identified audience. Those working to improve the quality of health service delivery can also make good use of this resource
more
This guide is available in English, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic and Chinese
This guide consolidates COVID-19 guidance for human resources for health managers and policy-makers at national, subnational and facility levels to design, manage and ...preserve the workforce necessary to manage the COVID-19 pandemic and maintain essential health services.
The guide identifies recommendations to protect, support and empower health workers at individual, management, organizational and system levels.
more
The menu was developed using the WHO-CHOICE methodology to prepare and update, as appropriate, WHO estimates of the cost-effectiveness of a range of...> mental health interventions, in line with the development of Appendix 3 to the global action plan for the prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases 2013–2020.
WHO-CHOICE is a programme that helps countries to identify priorities based on health impact and cost-effectiveness. It can be applied to a wide range of strategies relevant to policies affecting health outcomes. All options are compared to a common comparator, a null scenario in which the impacts of currently implemented interventions are removed, thereby enabling comparison of interventions across geographical areas and aspects of health.
more
This is the ninth paper in our series, “Community Health Workers at the Dawn of a New Era”. Community health workers (CHWs) are in an intermedi...ary position between the health system and the community. While this position provides CHWs with a good platform to improve community health, a major challenge in large-scale CHW programmes is the need for CHWs to establish and maintain benefcial relationships with both sets of actors, who may have diferent expectations and needs. This paper focuses on the quality of CHW relationships with actors at the local level of the national health system and with communities.
more
The biosphere underlies the whole sustainable development concept, as the layer on
which society and the economy rely. Nature and biodiversity fuel the natural cycles
and life-support systems of the planet, on which humanity ultimately depends.
The Lancet Regional health Americas, vol.10 (2022) June 1, March 04, 2022DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lana.2022.100222
Access to health workers who are fit for purpose, motivated and protected is a fundamental force of health service delivery and the achievement ...an class="attribute-to-highlight medbox">of universal health coverage and the health and health-related Sustainable Development Goals. Data and knowledge of the distribution, skill mix and future development needs of the health workforce can mean the difference between enabling or impeding health systems performance, inclusive economic growth and global health security preparedness and response
more
This toolkit was developed to provide detailed information and resources to support implementation of the WHO intrapartum and immediate postnatal care recommendations at the health-care facility lev...el. The careful design of this toolkit is based on a rigorous evidence-based approach that includes implementation strategies of proven effectiveness to help close the gap between WHO’s care recommendations and current policies and practices.
The primary target audience for the toolkit includes policy-makers, health-care facility managers, implementers and managers of maternal and child health programmes, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and professional societies involved in the planning and management of maternal and child health services.
more
[Preface]. For more than forty years Primary Health Care (PHC) has been recognized as the cornerstone of an effective and responsive health system.... The Alma-Ata Declaration of 1978 reaffirmed the right to the highest attainable level of health, with equity, solidarity and the right to health as its core values. It stressed the need for comprehensive health services, not only curative but services that addressed needs in terms of health promotion, prevention, rehabilitation and treatment of common conditions. A strong resolutive first level of care is the basis for health system development [...] The Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) has supported the countries in the establishment of interprofessional PHC teams, in the transformation of health education and in building capacity in the strategic planning, and management of human resources for health. Nursing can play a critical role in advancing PHC. New profiles such as the advanced practice nurses, as discussed in this document, can be fundamental in this effort, and in particular, in health promotion, disease prevention and care, especially in rural and underserved areas.
more