Africa leads the way:

harnessing multi-sectoral collaboration to achieve uhc

A Multi-Sectoral Path to UHC

The Access Challenge and Harvard Global Health Institute. launched the One by One UHC Report, 'Africa Leads the Way: Harnessing Multi-Sectoral Collaboration to Achieve UHC' on June 5, 2020 at the Webinar "Finding Opportunity in Crisis: How to Use COVID-19 to Build Better UHC Systems in Africa.'

This report is an outcome of One by One UHC Conference 2019, which occurred alongside the 74th UN General Assembly. This report discusses the relationship between human health, climate change, and environmental resources such as water, food, and air, and their importance in achieving UHC in Africa. By focusing on access to nutritious food, clean water, and air as the building blocks of a healthy society, the report examines the relationship between diseases prevalent in Africa and these fundamental underlying causes. The Report also shows how if left unmitigated, climate change will undermine these critical multi-sectoral efforts to improve health.

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The Framework

UHC requires the coordination of multiple sectors to ensure that people have access to the resources and infrastructure they need to maintain a healthy life.

This UHC report introduces a new working framework for considering comprehensive UHC services. This Framework contextualizes the various activities and sectors a community needs in order to

maintain good health. Each service is a point of intervention at

which communities and their health system may promote

health, prevent, diagnose or treat disease. Promotive Care

includes the infrastructures and services necessary to foster

living conditions that support human health: including

access to clean air, clean water, and nutritious food.

Meanwhile, Preventive, Curative, Rehabilitative, and

Palliative Care includes the medical supplies and services

needed to support a person at various stages of preventing,

diagnosing and curing illnesses and providing safe

maternal health services.

This Framework demonstrates how sectors outside of health

can support the health sector in UHC development. It also

shows how, through this collaboration, investment in promotion

and prevention can minimize the prevalence of disease, the financial burden of disease treatment on health systems, and

ultimately the cost of Universal Health Coverage.

Report Brief

UHC webinar and Report launch event

“Africa Leads the Way is an important report which comes at a critical time in the advancement of Universal Health Coverage. The Nature Conservancy in Africa appreciates how the report effectively highlights the nexus of health, biodiversity conservation, and climate change adaptation.”

- Colin Apse, The Nature Conservancy