Leapfrogging to a healthy future via good investments

Building healthy populations is linked to building healthy cities and communities, and as such, all community leaders – whether they represent cities, regions, states, companies or schools – need to put health high on their agenda, specifically as a key criterion when making investment decisions. However, with such huge dividends to be gained from a healthy population, it is also clear that health should be a shared responsibility, requiring the contribution of all stakeholders in society. 

Where can the biggest return on investment be found? For the young, special attention could be placed on ensuring that determinants for healthy life and behaviour are built before the age of 12 (ie. healthy diets, avoiding tobacco, getting enough physical activity, etc.), as changing behaviour is harder to accomplish as compared to building and instilling the correct healthy behaviours at the crucial time.

For the elderly population, there is a need to ensure that communities are able to accommodate elder people, such as in the workplace and in cities, where specific transportation, urban design and lifestyle requirements are needed to deal with a growing percentage of elderly but active people.

Across the board, however, there is a great economic case for investing in information systems that go beyond medical health records, to enable sharing, aggregation, comparison and benchmarking of data. Such data would not only include clinical data but also information that would allow the measurement of positive and negative non-health actors on health.

Currently, issues around privacy, the lack of data standards, and regulations, affect the implementation of personal and health data sharing on a broad scale. There is currently still a lot of work to be done within industry and governments in ensuring that data sharing can be optimised without comprising the quality of information and, most importantly, the individual.

East Asia’s ageing population represents a major health challenge. With ageing contributing to the rising burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) within the population, this particular challenge requires a different health delivery system that emphasises prevention, regular check-ups and early detection, and compliance with secondary prevention at community level. This represents an opportunity for communities to innovate in the way they address NCDs, for example through centres organised at the local level, which are able to support patients through routine sugar and blood pressure testing, prescription renewal and similar vital services. In the absence of a strong network of primary care, this is the opportunity to create new categories of health centres and workers, who will address both maternal, neo-natal and child health, as well as NCD prevention and control.

Additionally, within ageing populations, mental health issues such as dementia and Alheizmer’s disease, and mobility issues, are present. Communities need to ensure that dependent individuals can be catered to, instead of having them rely on increasingly costly healthcare systems. The National Health Service of the United Kingdom and the civil society organisations like Home Instead, are two great examples of the home care system being championed for the efficient and affordable care of the elderly. These are examples of new models of organised care that can be catalysed by actors within the greater community.

In the future, health will have to be discussed and organised in a more inclusive way, one that includes community leaders, NGOs and civil society, in addition to the “usual healthcare experts” from public and private sectors, so that all these actors can be part of this critical debate and, ultimately, the solution.

 

Olivier Raynaud is a head of Global Health and Healthcare at the World Economic Forum.