Abstract
The approaches and tools of health promotion can be useful for civil society groups, local and national governments and multilateral organizations that are working to operationalize the 2030 agenda for sustainable development. Health promotion and sustainable development share several core priorities, such as equity, intersectoral approaches and sustainability, that help maximize their impact across traditional sectoral boundaries. In the Region of the Americas, each of these priorities has strong resonance because of prominent and long-standing health inequities that are proving resistant to interventions driven solely by the health sector. We describe several cases from the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Region of the Americas in which the approaches and tools of health promotion, with a focus on cities, healthy settings and multisectoral collaboration, have been used to put the agenda into practice. We highlight areas where such approaches and tools can be applied effectively and provide evidence of the transformative potential of health promotion in efforts to achieve the sustainable development goals.
Highlights
Transforming our world: the 2030 agenda for sustainable development 1 set the scene for innovative approaches to tackling inequities in health
The millennium development goals (MDGs)’ exclusive focus on low- and middle income countries has evolved into a systemic, whole-society approach that seeks to reduce inequality within and among countries and establish greater opportunities for comprehensive change
The World Health Organization (WHO) has established six lines of action (Box 1) and a series of explicitly multisectoral tools to approach the breadth of the health-related sustainable development goals (SDGs).[5]
Summary
Transforming our world: the 2030 agenda for sustainable development 1 set the scene for innovative approaches to tackling inequities in health. That is, the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve, their health,[3] has a potentially transformative role to play. As an approach, it aims to alter the economic, environmental, institutional and social contexts in which decisions relating to health and well-being are made, while sharing the SDGs’ focus on equity. The MDGs reinforced the entrenched sector-specific modalities of working that the SDG agenda seeks to change. The World Health Organization (WHO) has established six lines of action (Box 1) and a series of explicitly multisectoral tools to approach the breadth of the health-related SDGs.[5]
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