INTEGRATED AND MULTIFACETED SYSTEM
Individuals, providers, and institutions reinforce each other to expand health capability and effectuate health equity
WHAT IS IT?
An integrated and multifaceted system in health care and public health means that different actors and institutions reinforce each other to advance health capability. Individuals, providers, and institutions have respective roles and responsibilities in achieving health goals. The public and private sectors work together to improve health capability. They all work together, in good faith, to create just systems and environments that enable all to be healthy.
Furthermore, to promote health equity, individuals, providers, and institutions must take active steps. This occurs at multiple levels, where effective problem-solving and decision-making is accomplished through efficient consensus-building, open discussions, and shared attitudes and norms.
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
We need to understand global and domestic health inequalities as a set of problems that require collective solutions. Coordinating actors to work towards health equity will maximize efficiency and effectiveness and hold them morally responsible.
An integrated and multifaceted system values health capability and respects human life. This system ensures both responsibility and accountability in areas of public health and health policy. It builds effective institutions, systems, and practices that support all citizens’ health capabilities. At the same time, it assesses progress and emphasizes a shared commitment in achieving health and social justice worldwide.
WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE?
An integrated and multifaceted system provides a model that we can use to standardize prevention, treatment, and develop health policies and laws. Individuals alone, scientists alone, medical providers alone, public health experts alone, and insurers alone do not solve societal problems. Rather, individually and collectively, individuals, providers, and institutions assess and advocate for policies that promote health and health capability.
Tobacco control and HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment provide models of an integrated, multifaceted approach to health improvement that relies on cooperation and partnerships on various dimensions. They recognize the importance of addressing health needs on multiple fronts and developing strategies that integrate different public policies. For example, this has been possible through health education programs and social environments that enable individuals to protect themselves from infection and specific programs and treatments for sexually transmitted infections.
By having an integrated and multifaceted approach to health, we will better establish a shared commitment to improve health equity worldwide.
HOW DO WE DO IT?
An integrated and multifaceted system involves multiple levels. For example, individuals and providers work together when making decisions about health care and public health treatments and interventions. While providers use their medical expertise, individuals use their health agency with their own authority over these decisions. Governments must provide substantial direction, regulation, and financing while the private sector effectively provides goods and services. In an integrated and multifaceted system, public-private collaboration and investment are important.
An integrated and multifaceted approach involves multiple institutions making simultaneous progress on various fronts towards the same goals. A multifaceted system creates the positive conditions for the effective involvement of individuals, providers, and institutions in these processes. An integrated system emphasizes these actors coordinating with each other and working together to solve health equity problems.