The affordable dream

Abstract

Prevention is integral to achieving health equity and Universal Health Coverage. And yet prevention is a healthcare orphan: it is not usually a priority in the health sector or in any other sector of government. This chapter suggests five ways to redress that disadvantage: give prevention and public health budgets that are separate and protected from medical services, based on demonstrated benefits; define the goals of prevention in collaboration with, and considering the objectives and values held by, those who make the decisions; reassess the value for money provided by preventive methods that presently command large budgets, such as ‘healthy condition monitoring’; stimulate latent public demand for prevention by improving access to screening programmes, calibrating health insurance to favour prevention, and through workplace health promotion schemes, among others; and improve the appeal of prevention across the whole of government (beyond the health sector), using evidence to reinforce the long-standing goal of putting ‘Health in All Policies’.