Welcome to the United Nations
Permanent Mission of Thailand to the United Nations
Recognized in the 2019 Political Declaration on Universal Health Coverage, health promotion and health literacy are becoming increasingly critical to the viability and success of UHC policies and programmes, as well as for ensuring that the global health security and the broader ambitions of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development are fully realized, providing an equal opportunity for all to fully develop their human potential and advancing their right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health for everyone, everywhere.
Health promotion, a core function of public health, is the process of enabling governments, communities and individuals to cope with and address health challenges, through building healthy public policies, creating supportive environments, and strengthening community action and personal skills. Also, improving health literacy in populations provides the foundation on which citizens are enabled to play an active role in improving their own health, engage successfully with community action for health, and push governments to meet their responsibilities in addressing health equity, particularly in the most disadvantaged and marginalized societies.
COVID-19 has reaffirmed the importance of health promotion and health literacy, as response measures relying on existing tools, such a public information and immunization campaigns, and also highlighted growing challenges with the ways in which communities access information and governments foster trust. Therefore, it is important for governments and institutions to develop educational strategies to improve health literacy throughout the life course, reinforcing the linkage between SDGs 3 and 4 in building back better.
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