- Deputy Minister of Public Health, Mr. Dej-is Khaothong
- Professor Dr. Prakit Vateesatokit, Our health promotion champion
- Dr. Pongthep Wongwatcharapaiboon, CEO of the ThaiHealth Promotion Foundation
- Senior officials from the Government of the Kingdom of Thailand
- Representatives of IHPP, NHCO, and village health volunteers
- National and international health partners, colleagues and Friends
I am pleased to be with you today, here at the Thai National Conference on Universal Health Coverage.
Universal Health Coverage – or UHC – is a concept familiar to everyone in this room.
We know that it aims to ensure that all individuals receive the health care they need, without facing financial hardship. It is a fundamental goal of health systems worldwide to promote health equity and accessibility.
The journey of UHC is the modern journey of public health itself.
It starts in 1946, with the right to health being enshrined in the WHO constitution.
It continues with the 1978 Alma Ata Declaration, which reaffirms the need to achieve health for all.
It carries on to the launch of the International Health Partnership in 2007.
It continues to 2012 - with the first UN resolution endorsing UHC, and the 2015 launch of the SDGs.
And now, its journey brings us here today, to talk about health promotion and disease prevention being the key to successful UHC.
Disease prevention measures - such as vaccinations, screenings, and wellness checkups –not only avert illness, but also help with early detection and the management of existing conditions.
Other proactive measures such as lifestyle interventions can prevent diseases such as lung cancer, cardiovascular diseases, hypertension, and several chronic diseases.
The impact and benefits of disease prevention extend beyond individuals and include lower healthcare costs and improved health systems for better quality of care.
Health promotion, on the other hand, involves enabling individuals and communities to take control of their health.
The mechanisms for this include improving health literacy, understanding behavioural insights, and advocating for policy change. Understanding health information empowers individuals to make informed choices, and better equips them to prevent diseases and manage their conditions.
We have to work together to develop programmes to improve health literacy - across all demographic groups – and ensure that everyone has the knowledge they need to lead healthy lives.
Behavioural insights can be harnessed to drive change by understanding how people make health-related decisions. This allows us the opportunity to design interventions that resonate with them. Whether through nudges in our environment, or communication strategies, we can encourage healthier choices and optimize behaviours that lead to a better health.
It should be mentioned that health promotion works needs to involve local communities. This is needed to build trust, and to build an enabling environment in which people can live in health condition and learn to make healthier choices. By transforming our communities into spaces that promote health and wellness, we can significantly reduce the burden of diseases.
Indeed, both health promotion and disease prevention not only improve health outcomes, but also reduce burdens on health care systems.
I would like to commend Thailand for giving our region and the world a great example of health promotion working across sectors. You have done this over decades of community engagement, through community health volunteers, health promoting centres and hospitals, and healthy communities and cities initiatives.
These programmes and activities could not be achieved without clear and coherent policies. The policies influence everything from access to nutritious food, and safe spaces for physical activity, to the quality of the healthcare system.
Public policies are the key to addressing social and environmental determinants of health. It is our responsibility to engage with policymakers and urge them to make decisions that enhance health for all. Thailand has set examples for achievable ‘health-in-all’ policies and has implemented the whole-of-government and whole-of-society approaches.
As we can see, health promotion and disease prevention are interconnected and essential for achieving universal health coverage. They can reduce healthcare costs, lessen the burden on health systems, and improve the quality of life of people and their communities.
Integrating health promotion and disease prevention into healthcare systems is essential for achieving UHC, for healthier populations, to save lives, and even for greater economic stability. Investment in health promotion within health systems is needed. I would like to urge policymakers throughout our region to also consider innovative financing models, such as that of the Thai Health Promotion Foundation. Making flexible funds available to empower communities and stimulate people participation can lead to social innovations for health promotion.
It is imperative for individuals, communities, and policymakers to advocate for creating opportunities for everyone to lead a healthy life. By advocating for healthy public policies, enhancing health literacy, creating healthy settings, engaging communities, and applying behavioural insights, we can build healthier future for all.
Finally, I would like to tell you about one of the pillars of my Regional Roadmap for our South-East Asia Region. This roadmap has been co-created by our Member States and has been formally endorsed and adopted by them. One of the pillars calls making our approach more equitable by investing in ‘women, children, adolescents and vulnerable populations.’ We cannot achieve UHC without paying particular attention to these groups, and other underserved communicates. This mean that we need to pay attention to the factors and the root causes of their health conditions. It means we should effectively utilize health promotion to advocate for policy changes within the health sector - and across other sectors - to address these factors and bring positive change.
As I commend you for the excellent work you have done, I would like to reiterate the support, cooperation and partnership of the World Health Organization in all your efforts.
The WHO stands with you, our South-East Asia Regional office stands with you, and I stand with you.
Thank you.