From health systems to systems for health: much more than semantics

There’s something in the air. Ministries of health in the Bahamas, Barbados, and Botswana have added wellness to their titles—they are now ministries of health and wellness. They are not alone, so too have Belize, Jamaica, and Mauritius. India recently relaunched its health centres as health and wellness centres. Meanwhile the department of health in South Australia has become that of health and wellbeing. Dr Tedros, Director-General of the World Health Organisation (WHO), recently observed that “by and large, the world’s health systems do not deliver health care. They deliver sick care.” In response, Dr Tedros called for “fundamental changes,” to prevent disease by tackling the conditions that shape the health of people—which can be done “at a fraction of the cost of treating them.”1 The new Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research report calls for the re-imagining of health systems as “systems for health.”2 Might we be witnessing…
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