Global Health and Foreign Policy : Rethinking Health Promotion as a Transformative Path Towards Improved and More Sustainable Well-Being for All

A/RES/79/287View PDF

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

A Resolution of the General Assembly, under agenda item 127 Global health and foreign policy, published in 2025.

What subjects does this mandate have?

3 subjects

What’s in this document?

25 operative paragraphs

Calls upon relevant United Nations entities and intergovernmental organizations and invites nongovernmental organizations, donors and the international community to cooperate with Member States in implementing national health promotion strategies and programmes, taking into account the Ottawa five priority actions of the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion, reaffirmed in the Geneva Charter for Well-Being;

Calls upon the World Health Organization and relevant United Nations entities and intergovernmental organizations and invites nongovernmental organizations, donors and the international community as a whole to continue advocating for evidence-based health promotion and disease prevention and policies and programmes to support Member States in strengthening multisectoral actions, increasing financing and establishing or building on, as appropriate, innovative, adequate and sustainable financing mechanisms for health promotion;

Recognizes that health financing requires global solidarity and collective effort, and urges Member States to strengthen international cooperation to support efforts to build and strengthen capacity in developing countries, including through enhanced official development assistance and financial and technical support and support to research, development and innovation programmes;

Urges Member States, as appropriate:

To increase investment and consider establishing or building on innovative and sustainable financing mechanisms for comprehensive health promotion and disease prevention with a firm institutional base for its management;

To take actions towards ensuring a primary healthcare approach as a resilient foundation to achieve universal health coverage and good public health;

To enhance health equity through transparency, responsiveness, efficiency, meaningful community involvement in health promotion, policy development and implementation, in order to improve access to quality and affordable healthcare services for all;

To empower the health and care workforce to provide health promotion, disease prevention and health communication at all levels;

Calls upon Member States to promote the transfer of technology and know-how and encourage research, innovation and commitments to voluntary licensing, where possible, in agreements where public funding has been invested in research and development for pandemic prevention, preparedness and response, to strengthen local and regional capacities for the manufacturing, regulation and procurement of needed tools for equitable and effective access to vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics and essential supplies, as well as for clinical trials, and to increase global supply through facilitating transfer of technology within the framework of relevant multilateral agreements;

Urges Member States to integrate digital health strategies into their national health promotion and disease prevention policies and programmes, and encourages Member States to align with the World Health Organization global strategy on digital health 2020–2025, as appropriate, in order to leverage digital technologies for the improvement of population health and well-being, including through public reporting and updating of progress in health promotion policy and implementation, maximize the access to and responsible use of digital health technologies, close digital divides in health, including the gender digital divide, strengthen digital health literacy among healthcare workers and the general population, recognizing digital health literacy as a critical tool in implementing health promotion in the digital age, as well as to develop and implement ethical guidelines while ensuring respect for the right to privacy and the protection of personal information and data in using digital health technologies, as well as developing health information systems and research capacity to gather and analyse information on the health of populations;

Also urges Member States to comprehensively prioritize health promotion, disease prevention and healthy lifestyles for all throughout the life course, through various measures, including by applying health-in-all-policies approaches, strengthening national and local capacities in order to plan and implement comprehensive, multisectoral health promotion and prevention policies, applying a One Health approach, seeking synergies to improve population health and enhance health equity for all, with particular attention to the poor and those in vulnerable situations, in order to address effectively the determinants of health throughout the life course, building enabling environments conducive to health, reducing risk factors through good governance, nutrition, education, health communication and health literacy, providing healthy and safe recreational opportunities, and strengthening regulatory frameworks for urban planning;

Further urges Member States to strengthen the capacity of health systems for monitoring and minimizing the public health impacts of climate change through adequate preventive measures, preparedness, timely response and effective management of natural disasters, and to develop health measures and integrate them into plans for adaptation to climate change as appropriate;

Urges Member States to ensure, by 2030, universal access to sexual and reproductive healthcare services, including for family planning, information and education and the integration of reproductive health into national strategies and programmes, and ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights as agreed in accordance with the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development¹⁶ and the Beijing Platform for Action¹⁷ and the outcome documents of their review conferences;

¹⁶Report of the International Conference on Population and Development, Cairo, 5–13 September 1994 (United Nations publication, Sales No. E.95.XIII.18), chap. I, resolution 1, annex.

¹⁷Report of the Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing, 4–15 September 1995 (United Nations publication, Sales No. E.96.IV.13), chap. I, resolution 1, annex II.

Recognizes the challenges related to the enjoyment of all human rights that older persons face in different areas and that those challenges require in-depth analysis and action to address protection gaps, and calls upon all States to promote and ensure the full realization of all human rights and fundamental freedoms for older persons, including by progressively taking measures to combat age discrimination, neglect, abuse and violence, as well as social isolation and loneliness, to provide social protection, access to food and housing, healthcare services, employment, legal capacity and access to justice and to address issues related to social integration and gender inequality through mainstreaming the rights of older persons into sustainable development strategies, urban policies and poverty reduction strategies, bearing in mind the crucial importance of intergenerational solidarity for social development;

Urges Member States to take into account health equity in all national policies that address determinants of health, consider developing and strengthening universal, comprehensive social protection policies and programmes, empower and support all people to protect and improve their own health and well-being, especially those who are vulnerable or in vulnerable situations, and take steps to improve the societal and economic conditions that affect their health;

Also urges Member States to highlight the importance of data-driven and evidence-based policymaking to address health inequities, and to accelerate progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals through quantitative and qualitative health-specific data insights, and to establish or strengthen mechanisms, as appropriate, for generating and sharing evidence for developing high-impact policies that promote well-being and address determinants of health through a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach;

Further urges Member States to implement the Rio Political Declaration on Social Determinants of Health, as appropriate, while stressing the importance of a continued dialogue on determinants of health, and looking forward to the convening of a one-day, high-level interactive dialogue on the social, economic and environmental determinants of health by the President of the General Assembly, in 2025;

Calls upon Member States to fully integrate sanitation, hygiene and safe water into their health promotion efforts as part of infection prevention and control, including to reduce the emergence, re-emergence and spread of antimicrobial resistance;

Also calls upon Member States to take measures to significantly reduce maternal, perinatal, neonatal, infant and child mortality and morbidity and increase access to quality healthcare services for newborns, infants and children, as well as all women before, during and after pregnancy and childbirth, including through providing antenatal and postnatal care, sufficient numbers of skilled birth attendants and adequately supplied birthing facilities;

Further calls upon Member States to strengthen capacity-building, continue to share good practices and support developing countries in health promotion, including by strengthening health systems and infrastructure, developing digital health strategies, enhancing efforts to achieve universal health coverage and ensuring equitable access to medical countermeasures, taking into account their national health priorities;

Urges Member States to fully implement recommendations from the political declaration of the third high-level meeting of the General Assembly on the prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases, including the provision of strategic leadership for the prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases through policy coherence across sectors and whole-of-government approaches and the implementation of evidence-based interventions for the prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases and carrying forward that momentum towards the high-level meeting on a comprehensive review, in 2025, of the progress achieved in the prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases and the promotion of mental health and well-being;

Calls upon Member States to ensure an effective, coordinated, appropriate, comprehensive and equitable approach to prevention, preparedness and response to the international spread of disease, including through implementing the amended International Health Regulations (2005);

Invites all members of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body to continue to contribute actively towards a successful and timely conclusion of the negotiation of a legally binding World Health Organization convention, agreement or other international instrument on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response;¹⁸

¹⁸See World Health Organization, document WHASS2/2021/REC/1, decision SSA2(5).

Invites the World Health Organization, in coordination with other relevant United Nations agencies, to continue to provide and disseminate evidence-based normative guidance and provide technical support to Member States, upon their request, in order to build capacity, strengthen health systems, with innovative approaches to health promotion, including the use of digital health technologies and prevention, preparedness and response to health emergencies, promote training and education, recruitment and retention of the health and care workforce and technology transfer on mutually agreed terms with a particular focus on developing countries, notes with appreciation the creation and contributions of the World Health Organization Academy in this regard, and invites the World Health Organization to review the implementation and consider a possible extension of the global strategy on digital health;

Requests the Secretary-General, in close collaboration with the Director General of the World Health Organization as well as with relevant international organizations, to report to the General Assembly at its eightieth session, under the item entitled “Global health and foreign policy”, on international cooperation and multilateral efforts to enhance health promotion as a transformative path towards improved and more sustainable well-being for all in order to promote equity in health for the achievement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.¹⁹

¹⁹Resolution 70/1.

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

What subjects does this mandate have?

What’s in this document?

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