It's time to take a sustainable approach to health care in the face of the challenges of the 21st century

Abstract

Health challenges in the 21st century have become increasingly complex and global. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated the many problems faced by health care systems around the world and sadly, exposed various flaws. With ageing populations, particularly in Canada, as well as unavoidable factors such as globalization and accelerating climate change, it is becoming imperative to implement a new health care approach based on intersectorality and interdisciplinarity. Furthermore, links must be forged between all the stakeholders, i.e. the researchers, the health system and its specialists, the communities and the individuals themselves. It is in this perspective, where everyone concerned must be equally involved in attaining a better quality of life, that the concepts of One Health and sustainable health must be deployed.

Keywords: Ageing; Climate change; Globalization; Intersectorality; One health; Sustainable health.

Fig. 1

Social, economic and physical environment, vulnerabilities and health cares (Sustainable Health (SH) model). SH can be achieved through intersectoral research to address the overall health of an individual and involving non-modulable factors (the individual's genome) and modulable factors (biophysical environment, psychosocial factors, behavior and lifestyle) and by the interactions between them (genetics and environment). Centre intersectoriel en santé durable de l'UQAC. http://cisd.uqac.ca/a-propos/definition/.

Fig. 2

Sustainable Health Approach in research diagram (modified from [2]). In the face of complex health issues, it is imperative to work in an intersectoral manner with the communities concerned (citizens, organizations, decision-makers) in order to co-construct effective solutions. These solutions will have to be evidence-based and should benefit from a network of methodologies specific to the various sectors. Citizen involvement guarantees the sharing of information and explanations, mutual listening or dialogue and leads to involvement driven by a mutual objective and a shared success in terms of the benefits inherent to the new models resulting from the research. In addition to promoting sustainable health, this approach increases education, health literacy, empowerment and translates into a self-management of health in a sustainable way.