Placing children and adolescents at the centre of the Sustainable Development Goals will deliver for current and future generations

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ABSTRACT

Child health is taking the back seat in development strategies. In summarising a newly released collaborative report, this paper calls for a novel conceptual model where child health takes centre stage in relation to the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals. It lays out five principles by which renewed effort and focus would yield the most benefit for children and adolescents. These include: re-defining global child health in the post-2015 era by placing children and adolescents at the centre of the Sustainable Development Goals; striving for equity; realising the rights of the child to thrive throughout the life-course; facilitating evidence informed policy-making and implementation; and capitalising on interlinkages within the SDGs to galvanise multisectoral action. These five principles offer models that together have the potential of improving design, return and quality of global child health programs while re-energising the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals.

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Measuring human capital: a systematic analysis of 195 countries and territories, 1990–2016

Stephen Lim, Rachel L Updike, Alexander S Kaldjian … (2018)

Background Human capital is recognised as the level of education and health in a population and is considered an important determinant of economic growth. The World Bank has called for measurement and annual reporting of human capital to track and motivate investments in health and education and enhance productivity. We aim to provide a new comprehensive measure of human capital across countries globally. Methods We generated a period measure of expected human capital, defined for each birth cohort as the expected years lived from age 20 to 64 years and adjusted for educational attainment, learning or education quality, and functional health status using rates specific to each time period, age, and sex for 195 countries from 1990 to 2016. We estimated educational attainment using 2522 censuses and household surveys; we based learning estimates on 1894 tests among school-aged children; and we based functional health status on the prevalence of seven health conditions, which were taken from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2016 (GBD 2016). Mortality rates specific to location, age, and sex were also taken from GBD 2016. Findings In 2016, Finland had the highest level of expected human capital of 28·4 health, education, and learning-adjusted expected years lived between age 20 and 64 years (95% uncertainty interval 27·5–29·2); Niger had the lowest expected human capital of less than 1·6 years (0·98–2·6). In 2016, 44 countries had already achieved more than 20 years of expected human capital; 68 countries had expected human capital of less than 10 years. Of 195 countries, the ten most populous countries in 2016 for expected human capital were ranked: China at 44, India at 158, USA at 27, Indonesia at 131, Brazil at 71, Pakistan at 164, Nigeria at 171, Bangladesh at 161, Russia at 49, and Mexico at 104. Assessment of change in expected human capital from 1990 to 2016 shows marked variation from less than 2 years of progress in 18 countries to more than 5 years of progress in 35 countries. Larger improvements in expected human capital appear to be associated with faster economic growth. The top quartile of countries in terms of absolute change in human capital from 1990 to 2016 had a median annualised growth in gross domestic product of 2·60% (IQR 1·85–3·69) compared with 1·45% (0·18–2·19) for countries in the bottom quartile. Interpretation Countries vary widely in the rate of human capital formation. Monitoring the production of human capital can facilitate a mechanism to hold governments and donors accountable for investments in health and education. Funding Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.

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Ensuring multisectoral action on the determinants of reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health in the post-2015 era.

Austen Davis, Douglas Webb, Maria Neira … (2015)

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A life-course approach to health: synergy with sustainable development goals

Shyama Kuruvilla, Ritu Sadana, Eugenio Villar Montesinos … (2017)

Abstract A life-course approach to health encompasses strategies across individuals’ lives that optimize their functional ability (taking into account the interdependence of individual, social, environmental, temporal and intergenerational factors), thereby enabling well-being and the realization of rights. The approach is a perfect fit with efforts to achieve universal health coverage and meet the sustainable development goals (SDGs). Properly applied, a life-course approach can increase the effectiveness of the former and help realize the vision of the latter, especially in ensuring health and well-being for all at all ages. Its implementation requires a shared understanding by individuals and societies of how health is shaped by multiple factors throughout life and across generations. Most studies have focused on noncommunicable disease and ageing populations in high-income countries and on epidemiological, theoretical and clinical issues. The aim of this article is to show how the life-course approach to health can be extended to all age groups, health topics and countries by building on a synthesis of existing scientific evidence, experience in different countries and advances in health strategies and programmes. A conceptual framework for the approach is presented along with implications for implementation in the areas of: (i) policy and investment; (ii) health services and systems; (iii) local, multisectoral and multistakeholder action; and (iv) measurement, monitoring and research. The SDGs provide a unique context for applying a holistic, multisectoral approach to achieving transformative outcomes for people, prosperity and the environment. A life-course approach can reinforce these efforts, particularly given its emphasis on rights and equity.

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Author and article information

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Glob Health Action

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Glob Health Action

Journal ID (publisher-id): ZGHA

Journal ID (publisher-id): zgha20

Title: Global Health Action

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

ISSN (Print): 1654-9716

ISSN (Electronic): 1654-9880

Publication date Collection: 2019

Publication date (Electronic): 7 October 2019

Volume: 12

Issue: 1

Electronic Location Identifier: 1670015

Affiliations

[a ]Department of Public Health Sciences, Karolinska Institutet , Stockholm, Sweden

[b ]Sachs’ Children and Youth Hospital, South General Hospital , Stockholm, Sweden

[c ]Swedish Institute for Global Health Transformation (SIGHT), Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences , Stockholm, Sweden

[d ]Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Sahlgrenska University Hospital and University of Gothenburg , Gothenburg, Sweden

[e ]Emergency Department, Townsville Hospital and Health Service , Townsville, Australia

[f ]Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Sahlgrenska University Hospital and University of Gothenburg , Gothenburg, Sweden

[g ]Epidemiology of Psychiatric Conditions, Substance use and Social environment (EPICSS), Department of Public Health Sciences, Karolinska Institutet , Stockholm, Sweden

[h ]International Maternal and Child Health, Department of Women’s and Children’s Health, Uppsala University , Uppsala, Sweden

[i ]Paediatric Public Health Department, Sachs’ Children and Youth Hospital, South General Hospital , Stockholm, Sweden

[j ]Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University , Stockholm, Sweden

[k ]Institute of Medicine, Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg , Sweden

[l ]Department of Learning, Informatics, Management and Ethics, Karolinska Institutet , Stockholm, Sweden

Author notes

CONTACT Tobias Alfvén tobias.alfven@ 123456ki.se Department of Public Health Sciences, Karolinska Institutet , Tomtebodavägen 18 A, 171 77, Stockholm, Sweden

[*]

These authors contributed equally to this work.

Author information

Tobias Alfvén http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2328-3512

Johan Dahlstrand http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7004-8710

Anna-Clara Hollander http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1246-5804

Mats Målqvist http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8184-3530

Article

Publisher ID: 1670015

DOI: 10.1080/16549716.2019.1670015

PMC ID: 6792041

PubMed ID: 31587621

SO-VID: 46cbe079-5563-4b37-a9b9-df4c9c48e172

License:

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

History

Date received : 01 August 2019

Date accepted : 11 September 2019

Page count

Figures: 1, References: 16, Pages: 5

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Funded by: N/A

None.

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Placing children and adolescents at the centre of the Sustainable Development Goals will deliver for current and future generations

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UN Sustainable Development Goals

Most cited references 7

Measuring human capital: a systematic analysis of 195 countries and territories, 1990–2016

Ensuring multisectoral action on the determinants of reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health in the post-2015 era.

A life-course approach to health: synergy with sustainable development goals

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