In 2012, Primary Health Care Remains the Best Tool to Achieve Equity: Research Issues of A PHC Policy for 2012 and Beyond

Three decades have passed since Alma Ata and the situation is worse than what it was in 1978. Inequities have increased; issues of access are still grossly inadequate for a majority; poverty, gender inequality and social exclusion continue; and war, violence and conflict abound. This is a fertile ground for innovative research. We need to shift the emphasis from biomedical to social, and to rights-based research. Funding sources have to be convinced of such a need. For this to happen, empowered, organized claim holders must explicitly demand this. The 2008 World Health Report focused on reviving PHC; many research questions thus need to be addressed. If serious about health equity and sustainability, we must use scarce available resources in a social-responsive manner; an innovative PHC research agenda is crucial. Research is also needed on how WHO can better provide technical, moral and political leadership in PHC. WHO must promote policies that resolutely address the social determinants of health and the inalienable right to health of people.

A PHC research policy needs renewed commitments. The obstacles that have blocked a true PHC’s implementation so far need to be gone over again with a 2012 optic; the new

challenges that have emerged since 1978 have to be incorporated into the PHC agenda; and the social and political processes where PHC is embedded need to be better understood if PHC is to achieve equity. Twenty research questions will be proposed in this presentation. The research needed has to fill the gaps we still face so as to use the new knowledge to mount a forceful advocacy for change. The Commission on the SDH report only started us in that direction, but it remained shy on making recommendations commensurate with its findings. 

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