Progress and Gaps on the Road towards Sustainable Development Goal 3

The “Health for All” thematic group, co-led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) within the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, has presented a series of policy briefs entitled “Achieving SDG3”. The document’s aim is to contribute to the analysis of achievements and remaining gaps on the road towards universal health coverage (UHC) and a comprehensive primary health care implementation, two central issues in achieving the health-related goal (SDG3) of the 2030 Agenda. 

With at least half of the world’s population not having full coverage of essential health services, and about 100 million people still being pushed into “extreme poverty” because they have to pay for health care, UHC means that all individuals and communities receive the health services they need- from health promotion to prevention, treatment, rehabilitation, and palliative care- without suffering financial hardship.

Primary health care, as conceived by the Alma Atta Conference, refers to the principles of equity, community participation, and intersectoral action. In this regard, ISGlobal has contributed to this series with two reports: “SDGs and Urbanisation: Making the Case for Health in Urban Planning”, a case study of cities and local policies that shows how to include health in a different sector’s policies, such as urban planning; and “Health in All Policies: Opportunities in the Sustainable Development Goals Agenda”, that analyses the “Health in All Policies” approach as a way to implement a multi-stakeholder, coherent, and intersectoral approach.

The other three reports of the series focus on key topics such as public financing mechanisms, a workforce of professionalized community health workers, and the promise of new technology to increase access to and quality of care.