World Health Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) that deals with international public health whose headquarter is based in Geneva, Switzerland. World Health Organization (WHO) has six regional offices and over 145 field offices worldwide. WHO was formed in 1948 to work across the globe to promote health, keep the world safe from disease, and serve the vulnerable members of society (World Health Organization, 2019). The agency advocates for universal health care coverage, promoting the health and wellbeing of people, monitoring public health risks, and coordinating responses to all health emergencies. World Health Organization offers technical assistance to countries and nations in setting international health standards and collecting data on the world health issue. The vision of the World Health Organization is to create a world in which every person can live a healthy and productive life. This vision is supported through funding by State Members and voluntary states to help reach out to vulnerable groups and keep the world safe. This report seeks to evaluate the role of the World Health Organization (WHO) in public health and safety improvement. The report also evaluates how World Health Organization promotes equal opportunity and improves the quality of life in the community.
According to World Health Organization, public health is defined as “the art and science of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts of society” (World Health Organization, 2016). World Health Organization is focused on strengthening public health capacities at the community level across the world so that people can maintain their health status as well as improve their wellbeing. The objective of this world agency is to make people attain or achieve the highest possible level of their health status across the world. World Health Organization has played a critical role in many public health achievements; for instance, it has helped eradicate smallpox, polio, Ebola, controlling the spread of HIV/AIDS, coronavirus, tuberculosis, and non-communicable diseases.
World Health Organization defined its role in public health as providing leadership on matters essential to health and involving in partnerships, especially where joint action is required. The second objective of the World Health Organization in public health is shaping the research agenda and generation stimulation and translation of helpful knowledge. Other objectives of WHO in public health include articulating the ethical and evidence-based alternative policies, establishing norms and standard measures, enhancing and monitoring their policy implementations, monitoring health status and evaluating health trends, and offering technical support and structuring sustainable institutional capacity (World Health Organization, 2020).
World Health Organization promotes health in the community through many enabling processes by increasing control over and improving people’s health. Health promotions by this organization focus on achieving the physical, mental, and social wellbeing of people across the world to realize and identify their aspirations, satisfy their needs and cope with the environment. Health is a resource to every individual across the globe. Therefore, World Health Organization focuses on making social, political, cultural, economic, environmental, biological, and behavioral factors stable through advocacy for health to all people across the world. Through health promotions, World Health Organization has improved many people’s lives. It continues to inform them what they could do to stay healthy and address challenges in the community that may jeopardize people’s health.
World Health Organization (WHO) develops and implements the cross-cutting normative, fiscal, and legal actions as well as capacity development tools across the globe. WHO plays critical roles in the community by advancing world health in health literacy, good governance for health, and community engagement? The organization also fosters or cultivates public health action in the setting of human lives. World Health Organization gets its funding from its member states which is paid as countries’ membership dues and voluntary contributions from different partners and the Member States. The funding from the named sources is used in advancing gender quality and human rights in the health system, catalyzing health progress to fight against non-communicable diseases, and improving countries’ health systems by incorporating people. This world health agency remains independent and focused on dealing with pressing health challenges worldwide.
Since health is determined by many factors, including personal behaviors, economic status, genetic inheritance, and physical environment, World Health Organization seeks to promote equity in health care across the globe. These variables create disparity in health care systems at all levels. Therefore, World Health Organization’s objectives focus on making health care services accessible to all people in the community. The health promotion strategies adopted by World Health Organization seek to fit individual countries’ local needs and possibilities because of diversity in social, cultural, and economic systems adopted across the world. World Health Organization has many stipulated public health objectives such as articulating the ethical and evidence-based alternative policies, establishing norms and standard measures, enhancing and monitoring their policy implementations, monitoring health status and evaluating health trends, and offering technical support and structuring sustainable institutional capacity.
Equity is among the aim of health promotion by the World Health Organization. World Health Organization (WHO) is focused on achieving equity in health across the world by ensuring that people across all walks of life have access to good health care services. WHO’s promotion actions aim to reduce the differences in current health status by ensuring equal opportunities and resources to enable all people worldwide to achieve their fullest health potentials. World Health Organization focuses on achieving equity in the community by establishing a secure foundation in the supportive environment, giving community members full access to health information, life skills, and opportunities to make healthy choices. World Health Organization is focused on establishing equity in the health system by eradicating all possible dimensions of inequality manifested in healthy systems. Since health is a fundamental right, World Health Organization seeks to achieve health equity by ensuring all people in the community have full health potential.
World Health Organization can achieve universal healthcare through social justice when the outcomes are well monitored to practical justice intervention. The world health agency should increase its funding sources by increasing its members and looking for more partnerships to gain a solid financial status (Brownson et al., 2017). Since there are many social injustices in health systems that are caused by social determinants, political class, cultural values, and beliefs, among other barriers, this world health agency should expand community-based services and online services which are easily accessible, sustainable as well as solve major pressing issues more effectively to create a healthy society.
Community health nurses play critical roles in providing health care services in many settings. These nurses can be actively involved in World Health Organization programs such as community health clinics, providing shelters to the homeless, and mental and spiritual nourishments to affected patients at local levels (Bull et al., 2020). Nurses remain at the forefront of world health care, and they can suit everywhere that needs human assistance. Nurses educate, innovate, and advocate for the wellbeing of people in the community; therefore, maximum utilization of nurses in the World Health Organization with expanding health services to communities across the world.
Since the World Health Organization has millions of people at the community level, there is a need to expand its health services worldwide to realize its goals and objectives. There is a need for the world agency to develop comprehensive promotion health strategies such as creating supportive environments, strengthening community action, conducting community-wide campaigns, strengthening and participating in community partnerships, improving access to outdoor recreational services, reorienting health services, and building and maintaining public policies. All these strategies should aim to reduce tobacco use, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hypertension, obesity, nutritional condition, among other health disorders (Stanhope & Lancaster, 2019). Strengthening public health interventions will help achieve significant impact, especially when dealing with social and environmental variables, so people can easily take health actions seriously.
In conclusion, World Health Organization continues to play a critical role in ensuring people worldwide have access to good health care services without discrimination or prejudices constructed on sex, gender, social class, age, race, disability, ethnicity, and other dimensions of inequality. World Health Organization offers technical assistance to countries and nations in setting international health standards and collecting data on the world health issue. World Health Organization should expand its services to reach individual people at the community level and promote health education on matters concerning health. The agency advocates for universal health care coverage, promoting the health and wellbeing of people, monitoring public health risks, and coordinating responses to all health emergencies.
References
Brownson, R. C., Baker, E. A., Deshpande, A. D., & Gillespie, K. N. (2017). Evidence-based public health. Oxford university press.
Bull, F. C., Al-Ansari, S. S., Biddle, S., Borodulin, K., Buman, M. P., Cardon, G., … & Willumsen, J. F. (2020). World Health Organization 2020 guidelines on physical activity and sedentary behavior. British journal of sports medicine, 54(24), 1451-1462.
Stanhope, M., & Lancaster, J. (2019). Public health nursing e-book: Population-centered health care in the community. Elsevier Health Sciences.
World Health Organization. (2016). Community health workers: a strategy to ensure access to primary health care services. World Health Organization. Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean.
World Health Organization. (2019). Translating community research into global policy reform for national action: a checklist for community engagement to implement the WHO consolidated guideline on the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women living with HIV.
World Health Organization. (2019). Consolidated guideline on sexual and reproductive health and rights of women living with HIV: web annex: community-led strategies for implementation (No. WHO/RHR/17.33). World Health Organization.
World Health Organization. (2019). Field test version: mhGAP community toolkit: Mental Health Gap Action Programme (mhGAP). World Health Organization.
World Health Organization. (2020). Health policy and system support to optimize community health worker programs for HIV, TB and malaria services: an evidence guide.
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