Boost health promotion to advance UHC
Kenya has UHC as a pillar in its ‘Big Four Agenda’. Achieving UHC is an important objective for all countries to attain equitable and sustainable health outcomes and improve the well-being of all.
Universal health coverage (UHC) has become an influential global health policy. UHC, which entails ensuring that all individuals have access to quality healthcare without any financial difficulties, as per the SDGs.
Kenya has UHC as a pillar in its ‘Big Four Agenda’. Achieving UHC is an important objective for all countries to attain equitable and sustainable health outcomes and improve the well-being of all.
For the effective and sustainable implementation of UHC, strategic investments should be made towards building local funding mechanisms to support and sustain health promotion programmes.
As a core function of public health, health promotion supports governments, communities and individuals to cope with and address health challenges.
Nicole L. Buist rightly observes in the Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences that the health situation is at a unique crossroads amid a ‘triple burden of diseases’ constituted by the unfinished agenda of communicable diseases, new and re-emerging diseases and the unprecedented rise of non-communicable chronic diseases (NCDs).
To counter the challenges due to the changing scenarios such as demographic and epidemiological transition, urbanisation, climate change, food insecurity and financial crisis, health promotion has emerged as an important tool; in addition to the need for newer, innovative approaches.
Health promotion is important not only in terms of alleviating the burden of disease but also in laying the groundwork for societal growth. Besides, these initiatives can be cost-effective. A 2018 WHO report estimated that priority interventions for NCD prevention and control would yield a return of at least $7 for every $1 invested by 2030.
Health promotion can enable more effective use of resources by reducing demand for expensive services and cutting hospital admissions. Health and economic benefits include improving environments, sanitation and housing, reducing treatment costs and promoting healthy lifestyles.
The HIV/Aids national response provides good experiences regarding the benefits of combination promotion, including national coordination of the multiple stakeholders and actors. According to Sanjiv Kumar and GS Preetha in “Health Promotion: An Effective Tool for Global Health”, a multisectoral, adequately funded, evidence-based health promotion programme with community participation, targeting the complex socioeconomic and cultural changes at family and community levels, is the need of the hour to positively modify the complex socioeconomic determinants of health.
As Gloria Coea and Joy de Beyerb state in “The imperative for health promotion in universal health coverage”, implementing robust, effective evidence-based health promotion programmes would improve people’s health profoundly and also ensure the financial viability of UHC. Sustaining good health and well-being is human capital for a productive economy and a happy population.
Ms Sirima is public communications officer, Pharmacy and Poisons Board. [email protected].
