GLOBAL FUNCTIONS AT THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION

Accelerating globalization has changed dramatically the context in which WHO works, offering both opportunities and challenges for health and its distribution. The transfer of knowledge and technology and the sharing of best practices, treatments, and health strategies provide real benefits to previously underserved populations. The WHO must reassert its role in integrating, coordinating, and advancing the worldwide agenda on health by striking a balance between its global role in advocacy, surveillance, standard setting, and research as compared with its more operational work in specific countries and regions.  

WHO has the capability to promote public health goods for the benefit of all. It has a unique coordinating function, with its constitution alone having the authority to develop and implement worldwide standards and initiatives to improve health. As increasing pluralism in the global health arena leads to a growing consensus calling for global solutions, at the time this article was written, thinking at WHO instead implied that it would become more operational and less global.

The WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health is a notable exception to this trend, fulfilling WHO’s agenda-setting role by identifying this issue as a priority for international cooperation and national action. However, this article highlights that other areas of global health urgently need strengthening and WHO must reassert its role in integrating, coordination, and advancing the worldwide agenda on health.

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