2013 Archives - WISH

Road Traffic Injury

wish admin — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 13:20:23 +0000

Road traffic injuries (RTIs) are a major cause of death and disability around the world. Significant progress has been made in reducing RTIs, but more can and should be done. Forum members bring a wealth of experience and forward thinking to the table. With representation from health systems, private and public sectors, non-governmental organizations and research institutions, the panel reflects the multi-sectoral nature of road safety and trauma care. The Forum will build on an analysis of existing best practices as well as promising practices at local, national and international levels to make practical recommendations to policy-makers on how the burden of RTIs can be reduced in an innovative and sustainable way. The Forum will consider a wide range of policy levers and interventions, including primary prevention, post-injury care and rehabilitation to effect change. Key to the work of the Forum will be a focus on innovations that can provide new solutions, new methods for implementation or new potential for scaling up evidence-based interventions to save millions of lives.

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Patient Engagement

wish admin — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 13:19:50 +0000

Virtually all people are patients at some point in their lives. Improving a person’s ability to understand and manage his or her own health and disease, negotiate with different cadres of health professionals, and navigate the complexities of health systems is crucial to achieving better health outcomes. Empowerment is about respecting patients’ rights and voice and ensuring a shift towards patient-centered care. This Forum will consider all the different aspects of patient empowerment, including health literacy, chronic disease, self-management, and the role of technology. It will also make the case for greater patient involvement in the designing of national policies, with the aim of making health systems more user friendly and information more accessible.

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Obesity

wish admin — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 13:19:14 +0000

United Nations agencies and Governments around the world have taken note of the increasing prevalence of obesity in children and adults as hallmarks of an epidemic of non-communicable diseases. Obesity-related diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer pose serious health burdens to populations and threaten economies because they are so costly to treat. Multiple sectors of society can potentially contribute to the solution. Strategies for obesity prevention and management are needed in all countries. The greatest opportunities for controlling the problem may be found in countries where it has just begun to emerge but the greatest urgency is felt in countries where the problem is most advanced. Strategies that are appropriate and effective for addressing obesity will differ according to whether there is also prevalent under-nutrition, as is many low and middle income countries. How to approach obesity will also differ according to the nature of national and regional food systems, physical environments, healthcare and public health infrastructures, and social and cultural factors. This Forum is scanning the global environment to identify the key challenges and opportunities for tackling obesity. We are identifying case studies around the world showcasing mobilization of local resources and ingenuity in obesity prevention and control. Our recommendations will align with development goals and also afford ample opportunity for local creativity and innovation.

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Mental Health

wish admin — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 13:18:35 +0000

Mental disorders account for more than a quarter of all years lived with a disability globally, yet the majority of people suffering from these conditions do not receive adequate treatment and care. The Forum members bring a wealth of experience to solving this problem, including national and international policy makers, researchers, representatives from non-governmental organizations, and the private sector. The Forum’s report will argue that the integration of mental health into routine healthcare (including general hospitals, primary healthcare and community care) is the primary route to achieve parity between mental and physical health and to address the human rights abuses suffered by people with mental disorders. The report will reinforce the commitment of countries expressed in WHO’s Mental Health Action Plan and propose a number of key innovations which seek to achieve this goal. The report will emphasize innovations which have been demonstrated to be effective, have the potential to be delivered at scale in the short-term, and are suitable for translation to other contexts.

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End-of-Life

wish admin — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 13:17:58 +0000

End of Life Care (EoLC) is tragically deficient in many areas of the world, particularly in lower and middle income countries. The lack of education, communication, and understanding about death and dying, combined with geographical, cultural, societal, and traditional norms have inhibited quality EoLC in countries hardest hit by the burden of disease. These barriers, along with the lack of access to vital pain medication, have resulted in millions of people suffering unnecessarily at the end of life. Our Forum will encourage nations to make EoLC a national healthcare priority and to create a paradigm shift in which quality EoLC is a benchmark of a successful nation. With representation from across the globe, our Forum accepts the diverse challenges that nations face in caring for patients at the end of life but is adamant that much more must be done to reduce unnecessary suffering across the world. The Forum will recommend specific steps nations can take to dramatically improve EoLC and will focus on innovations that can provide new solutions, whether policy, technology, or logistically driven in nature.

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Big Data & Healthcare

wish admin — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 13:17:22 +0000

Today we live our lives in digital networks. Around the world, we wake up in the morning, check our messages, make a quick phone call, and commute to work with our cell phone checking in at each passing cell tower. All of these transactions leave behind digital breadcrumbs – tiny records of our daily experiences that together comprise what we call “big data”. These digital crumbs offer us a view of our lives, both individually and collectively, that adds important new dimensions to health records, demographic data, and genetic data. While there is great potential to be realized by linking and aggregating data from patients and healthcare providers around the world to uncover population health patterns, there may be even greater benefits from linking and utilising non-health, behavioural data. Big data has now reached every sector in the global economy. Awash with data, the traditional stakeholders from the healthcare industry have struggled to turn these data into information that guides care decisions more effectively. “Big data” technological innovations propel us into a data-driven frontier in public health and medicine: petabytes of raw information about social interactions, activity levels, travel patterns and shopping habits, combined with existing health data, have the potential to greatly enhance the opportunities to predict long-term conditions and identify non-traditional intervention points, as well as to design better diagnostics tools, prevent diseases, and increase access to – and reduce the costs of – healthcare. The potential extends far beyond enabling more efficient hospital and public health systems but so far, this has mostly remained a theoretical possibility due to a number of barriers including privacy and data ownership issues. There are emerging best practice examples, however, which have begun to demonstrate the potential of these largely untapped health and behavioural data. The purpose of the Big Data Forum is therefore to provide a framework to inform discussion, summarise existing best practices, highlight the remaining barriers, and develop policy recommendations to overcome these hurdles.

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Antimicrobial Resistance

wish admin — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 13:15:54 +0000

Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) is resistance of a microorganism to an antimicrobial medicine to which it was originally sensitive. Resistant organisms are able to withstand attack by antimicrobial medicines, such as antibiotics, antifungals, antivirals, and antimalarials, so that standard treatments become ineffective and infections persist, increasing risk of spread to others. The evolution of resistant strains is a natural phenomenon that happens when microorganisms are exposed to antimicrobial drugs, and resistant traits can be exchanged between certain types of bacteria. The misuse of antimicrobial medicines accelerates this natural phenomenon and poor infection control practices encourage the spread of AMR. The development of AMR is a natural phenomenon. However, certain human actions actually accelerate the emergence and spread of AMR. AMR is a complex problem driven by many interconnected factors, so single and isolated interventions have little impact and coordinated actions are required. This Forum will focus on the actions that can be taken to combat AMR, including fostering coordinated actions by all stakeholders, creating policy guidance, supporting surveillance, providing technical assistance, and fostering innovation in research and development.

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Accountable Care

wish admin — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 13:26:08 +0000

The concept of integrated and accountable care is growing in popularity around the world. Many health systems are experimenting with versions of the model in the hope that it can improve patient outcomes and experience, whilst reducing costs. Key to these processes are clinical integration or coordination across provider networks, placing patients at the center of care, and ensuring provider accountability for achieving agreed targets through performance measures and incentives. The Accountable Care Forum aims to examine the organizations and systems around the world that have experience of implementing some form of integrated and accountable care and give detailed and insightful case studies of their experiences. It will further pull out the key success factors for making the shift and evaluate the benefits for the patient, organization and health system. Integrated and accountable care promises to move health systems away from a volume-based approach to one that is value-based. The way this will be achieved will vary by country and system, but common to all systems will be a set of key principles, such as enabling the exchange of data between providers, transparent metrics, creating an environment that supports the shift to value-based payments, and rigorous standards. This Forum will look at what that means for policy makers and what things they can do to make integrated and accountable care a reality within their healthcare system.

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