Sustainable health: A new dimension of sustainability science
- Dean, Harvard School of Public Health
The traditional view of health in the context of economic development was that if a country gets its macroeconomics right, health improvement will follow. Empirical evidence that some countries with low per capita gross domestic product have life expectancies comparable with those in the richest countries and others with significant gross domestic product per capita but poor health outcomes has changed the paradigm to recognition that health is a significant contributing determinant of economic and social development (1–3). Some health challenges for developing countries are how to share in the benefits of continually evolving and advancing medical technologies, how to control costs yet increase access to basic services, how to define and provide basic health prevention and care services, and how to create sustainable programs that improve the health of their people. Other issues include how to balance resource allocations for prevention relative to treatment, whether for HIV/AIDS or the epidemic of …
