Strategies for Strengthening Health Systems

Recently, global health society has paid growing attention to linking Primary Health Care (PHC) as well as Health Promotion (HP) with a health system strengthening policy.  The World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund declared PHC strategy at Alma-Ata in 1978 in order to renovate health system to achieve “Health for All”. Dr. Mahler H., then Director-General of WHO, expressed the basic idea with the phrase of “demystification of medical technology” for new health system, which should be practical, scientifically sound, socially acceptable by people, and universally accessible to community, without professionally advanced medical wisdom.  Thus, PHC can be redefined as essential healthcare in which professional-driven medical knowledge and technology is transformed by appropriate technology for patients and local people to possess and use autonomously and intentionally. In other words, PHC is a strategy that “makes healthcare people-centered”, or “promotes human and social development in health”. On the other hand, the HP strategy was proclaimed at Ottawa in 1986, aiming to deal with a broad range of determinants of health including socioeconomic factors beyond the control of the health sector through participation and multisectoral collaborations. The WHO noticed that the health system can be instrumental in involving other sectors as partners in HP. HP can be redefined, therefore, as the process of enabling individuals and people to make themselves and settings over multi-sectors much healthier. HP can be seen as a strategy that “makes people and settings health-oriented”, or “promotes health in human and social development”. Based on the aforementioned discussion, in the presentation, conceptual intervention models of PHC and HP will be proposed to strengthen the health system.