Jocelyn Keith's prescient question about the human right to health and healthcare

Adams, Sue PhD R. N.; Cook, Catherine PhD R. N.; Jones, Shelley R. N. B. A. MPhil

[...]she makes an argument for an evidence-based direction: "The escalating cost of the aggregation of individual decisions within the health system makes it imperative that science address the urgent need for information about the link between health status and health service" (p. 20). Yet the notion of health conjures up visions of high-tech hospitals delivering complex interventions to provide healthcare, often with inadequate attention to primary health care and public health sciences where the focus is on health promotion and illness prevention. The World Health Organization's (WHO) 17 Sustainable Development Goals (2015) describe that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth - all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests. The commonly used term the right to health includes the right to healthcare, and the right to the underlying preconditions for health, including access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation, healthy houses and environments, safe workplaces, and health-related information.