Constructive Critical Voice on the World Stage

Health promotion and sustainable development are a part of much larger process and a web of complex global issues that will have to be addressed in the years ahead, concluded the speakers of the closing session ‘Economic Change and Global Challenges.’ Our well-being is affected by policies, globalization, the economy and the environment, which is one of the major challenges we are facing today and in the future. It will be the task of the international community to analyze the complex connections and interactions and to deal with the issues in a sustainable manner.

The end of the last century saw political, social and environmental transformations, changes in democratic structures and governance as well as a rapidly accelerating technical progress. Globalization exacerbated existing profound challenges such as poverty and exclusion, resulting in fundamental changes and multiple contradictions as well as an export of bad habits from the north to the south, said Gordon Alexander, a senior policy advisor in UNICEF’s Regional Office. Initiatives at all different levels must be based on regulatory frameworks, backed by partnerships with governments and the private industry and borne by the succeeding generations, Alexander said. 



Representing this younger generation was Sarah Schulman, 26, a student from the University of Oxford, who advocates solving social problems backwards. Schulman blends visual, business, and social-policy methods to create new concepts of public responses with the affected people in their own context to act on issues such as child abuse, ageing, youth reoffending, and chronic disease.

The single-biggest cause of death in the world are non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in lower-income countries, where people not only run a higher risk but often also have limited access to healthcare services, outlined Ala Alwan from the World Health Organization. As a result, more than 8 million people in developing countries die from NCDs such as heart and lung disease, cancer and diabetes before the age of 60, thus representing the fourth-largest global threat to economic development, Alwan elaborated.

In order to deal with health and economic threats, governments need coordinated bottom-up trans-border strategies, tighter financial regulations and global solidarity, urged Walden Bello, a member of parliament in the Philippines. IUHPE’s role in this process aimed at promoting well-being is to make health promotion an issue in every international debate that touches upon health, said President Elect Michael Sparks.