Health

From Bertelsmann Future Challenges

Health is a perfect example of a field that is highly interconnected with other areas. Although one might think that it’s the quality of healthcare that primarily determines how healthy people are, this is not the case. Much broader factors such as socio-economic, cultural and environmental conditions, and living and working conditions (housing, sanitation and education) and one´s own community network and lifestyle influence if someone gets sick in the first place and how well they cope with disease and illness. What is called for, therefore, is a Health in All Policies strategy. If we want to improve health effectively, health has to be taken into account in all policy fields. Improving health solely through health policy, better healthcare and ministries of health simply will not work.

Great challenges in health are waiting to be resolved as industrialized countries struggle with ever-increasing healthcare budgets. What to do with innovative technologies and medicines that improve health, but are so expensive that they cannot be paid for within existing budgetary constraints? On the other hand, people in developing countries can hardly afford healthcare and often enough it is not available at all. How can health systems be strengthened and how can we achieve access to healthcare for everyone? How do we ensure that people in developing countries who have finished education and could now start to help their country to develop do not die at an early age of a disease that could have been cured or prevented easily? In rich and poor countries alike people suffer and die from the effects of obesity, tobacco and alcohol, although the detrimental effects of these are well known. How do we solve these problems?

Correlations/Crosslinks

• Correlations/Crosslinks - Health

Health Sessions at the Global Economic Symposium 2011

The first link of each session will take you GES Policy Wiki on FutureChallenges.org to propose concrete solutions, the second link leads you to the GES 2011 Session Information.

• Financing Health Care for the Poor GES 2011 Session Information

• Improving Retirement and Health Choices GES 2011 Session Information

Experts and Institutions

• Experts and Institutions - Health