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Reflects on the prevailing health inequities across the globe and attempts to address some of these global health determinants and related global injustices.

Specifically focuses on potential directives for achieving the lofty goal of “health for all” through improved health promotion efforts.

The concept of “health for all”, envisages the attainment of a level of health that permits all the people of the world to lead a socially and economically productive life and this goal has been guiding health strategies all over the world for the past two decades. However, in the present day heterogeneous world, where wide disparities in health and social conditions exist between and within countries and regions, achievements in health are disturbingly dissimilar.

Presents a health promotion perspective that could advance the ideal of “health for all”.

Explains that Health for All is an international extra‐governmental movement that seeks to pursue equity in access to health‐related resources by broadening the scope of health policy. Notes that its major principles include social participation in state decision making, inter‐sectoral collaboration in policy formulation and the improvement of conditions for the disadvantaged. Points out that its local initiatives often encompass health‐service professionals and practitioners as well as the voluntary sector, social services and other local authority departments, and that the effect of this local activity on political understandings of health at a national level gives some indication of the extent to which this local time and effort have been justified. In this respect, notes two limits to the impact of the Health for All movement on the political debates about health in Britain. Suggests that these centre on a largely indifferent but powerful national government and an emphasis within the movement initiatives at the level of a politically marginalized local state.

On a world basis, 15% of the population has a disability. Having a disability can result in a higher frequency of health-related information needs than other users might experience. The Web represents a widely used source for health information. People with disabilities, however, often encounter barriers during online searching, such as inaccessible information, poorly designed search user interfaces and lack of compatibility with assistive technology. Consequently, many users are potentially excluded from a range of information sources. Measures are therefore needed to remove these barriers to avoid health disparities that can result from unequal access to information. Public libraries have a social responsibility to include all user groups, and should aspire to make fully accessible services. A good tool in this context is the implementation of the universal design mind-set, where the purpose is to develop services that are available to all people. This chapter discusses how universal design can be a premise for equal access to health information and potentially reduce health disparities in the context of users with disabilities. Both library services and education of librarians will be addressed.

The WHO Health for All goal of the year 2000 was unreachable due to a number of irreconcilable factors. However, governments agree that a resolution must be found to effectively cope with increasing health care costs. Furthermore, national health insurance schemes must be properly refined to suit local situations. Workable health policies and strategies for caring and treating sick people through reduced or cost effective methods must be developed as part of a Universal Health Coverage scheme. A review of progress made toward achieving the WHO goal of health for all. The purpose of this paper is to explore the government’s role and responsibilities to educate and support society to achieve optimum health.

This is a commentary piece.

Participation and involvement of all people of all walks of life in the development and management of their nation’s health care programs is an important requisite of good health for all. This should include financial participation and co-payment into the national health insurance scheme. Furthermore, national health care systems should involve or include the traditional/local and alternative systems of medicine in the most appropriate manner. Health care has to encompass the total range of comprehensive health interventions, inclusive of at least preventive, curative and rehabilitative care.

This paper provides a review of the current health system constraints and assesses the effectiveness of available options by way of ensuring that a country-specific UHC system may be successfully implemented.

Every seaport with foreign‐going shiping trade has always had its “foreign” quarters; every large city hat had its Oriental traders and services, eg., Chinese laundries, Indian restaurants, Italian restaurants, greengrocers, ice cream and biscuit manufacturers; all of which has meant that foreign foods were not unknown to food inspectors and the general public in its discerning quest for exotic food dishes. It was then largely a matter of stores specially stocking these foods for their few users. Now it is no longer the coming and going of the foreign seaman, the isolated laundry, restaurant, but large tightly knit communities of what have come to be known as the “ethnic minorities”, from the large scale immigration of coloured peoples from the old Empire countries, who have brought their families, industry and above all their food and eating habits with them. Feeding the ethnic minorities has become a large and expanding area within the food industry. There are cities in which large areas have been virtually taken over by the immigrant.

Improvements in neonatal and paediatric care mean that many children with complex care needs (CCNs) now survive into adulthood. This cohort of children places great challenges on health and social care delivery in the community: they require dynamic and responsive health and social care over a long period of time; they require organisational and delivery coordination functions; and health issues such as minor illnesses, normally presented to primary care, must be addressed in the context of the complex health issues. Their clinical presentation may challenge local care management. The project explored the interface between primary care and specialised health services and found that it is not easily navigated by children with CCNs and their families across the European Union and the European Economic Area countries. We described the referral-discharge interface, the management of a child with CCNs at the acute–community interface, social care, nursing preparedness for practice and the experiences of the child and family in all Models of Child Health Appraised countries. We investigated data integration and the presence of validated standards of care, including governance and co-creation of care. A separate enquiry was conducted into how care is accessed for children with enduring mental health disorders. This included the level of parental involvement and the presence of multidisciplinary teams in their care. For all children with CCNs, we found wide variation in access to, and governance of, care. Effective communication between the child, family and health services remains challenging, often with fragmentation of care delivery across the health and social care sector and limited service availability.

One Health is defined as an approach of integrating animal, human, and environmental health to mitigate diseases. One Health promotes public health by studying all factors, such as agriculture, food, and water security, mechanisms of toxicity and pathogenesis of acute and chronic diseases, sociology, economics, and ecosystem health (to name a few). Such an approach is essential because human, animal, and ecosystem health are inextricably linked; therefore, with this One Health approach, we are called to work together to promote, improve, and defend the health and well-being of all by enhancing cooperation and collaboration between physicians, veterinarians social scientists, economists, psychologists, legal professionals, philosophers, and other scientific health and environmental professionals. As such, the One Health movement and approach is a growing vision in global health and is gaining increasing recognition by national and international institutions, organizations, stakeholders, NGOs, and health policymakers. Likewise, the role of world-class universities is pivotal in discovering One Health scientific knowledge and translating them to policy and evidence-based practices. Universities have responsibilities to train future professionals capable of solving global health issues through interdisciplinary scientific knowledge, integrative approaches to teaching, research collaboration, community linkages, and leadership. This chapter discusses the importance of One Health and the role of higher education institutions’ One Health partnerships to improve global health.

This article explores the range of responses available to international bureaucracies when confronted with demands made by their member states through the study of the World Health Organization (WHO) during the 1970s and 1980s. I show that the WHO bureaucracy successfully addressed the demands of developing countries for health policies compatible with a more equitable world economic order, but in a way that preserved the bureaucracy's own agenda and without upsetting the opposite coalition of wealthy countries. Drawing on insights from the sociology of organizations, this article shows that externally dependent international bureaucracies are able to preserve their autonomous agenda by strategically reframing countries’ demands before responding to them.