Primary Health Care and Person Centered Medicine

Abstract

The popular usual meaning of primary care is health care at a basic rather than specialized level for people making an initial approach to a doctor or nurse for treatment. The concept of primary health care has evolved dramatically over the past four decades, particularly under the aegis of the World Health Organization with the additional participation of other institutional actors around the world. It is increasingly recognized as a fundamental concept and strategy for the advancement of health care and the promotion of health at national and international levels. Separately, as the programmatic global initiative on person centered medicine has been unfolding over the past decade, primary care, not surprisingly, is emerging as a prominent topic and concern for advancing person-centered medicine and health care. There are certainly conceptual and strategic reasons for such emergence. There have been as well institutional reasons for this. At the same time, person-centeredness is an open road for the optimization of primary care. Further understanding of the prominent position, special role, and particular challenges of primary care in person centered medicine is contributed by several of the papers published in the present issue of the International Journal of Person Centered Medicine.