Institute of Development Studies

Creating the health systems of the future

Special Issue of Social Science and Medicine launched at the Geneva Health Forum

Kate Hawkins - 22 May 2008

Many are struggling with how to design and implement health policies to take into account changed patterns of disease, new clinical and information technologies and the growing role of the private sector in many health systems. As a response a Special Issue of Social Science and Medicine offers suggestions about how policy-makers can create future-oriented health systems that meet the needs of the poor. The Issue was launched at the Geneva Health Forum at a session chaired by IDS Fellow Gerry Bloom.

2008 marks the 30th anniversary of Alma Ata – the declaration that called for urgent action to improve primary healthcare. Whilst some countries have made real progress in improving the health of their citizens there is still much that needs to be done if we are to meet the health needs of the poorest and most marginalised. It is a timely moment to take stock and to think how we can create health systems that work for everyone in a rapidly changing world.

‘We should be wary of a tendency to assume that improving healthcare in developing countries is just a non-problematic scaling-up of interventions or a choice between organisational models from advanced market economies’, said IDS Fellow Hilary Standing - one of the editors of the Issue. ‘Innovations are increasingly emerging from low and middle-income countries that are experiencing rapid economic and social transitions.’

This Special Issue will be of particular interest to those concerned with health system development and national and global debates on addressing the health problems of the poor. It will also interest students of health systems in the advanced market economies, as it argues that new developments in highly innovative countries in Asia and Africa may be precursors of more general institutional reforms in the future.

Kate Hawkins is Communication Officer for Health and Social Change at IDS