Analysis Integrating Public Health and Primary Care:
The response of six Asia Pacific Countries to the COVID pandemic.
Abstract: Strong primary health care (PHC) is the cornerstone for universal health coverage (UHC), reinforced by the Astana Declaration of 2018 as the best means to achieve an inclusive, effective, and efficient approach to enhance people’s physical and mental health and social wellbeing. PHC includes both public health (PH) and primary care (PC). A highly performing PC system provides access to first-contact, patient-centred care that is comprehensive, and continuous over time while coordinating services. The World Health Organization (WHO) resolution on the primary health care draft operational framework, approved by the WHO Executive Board in January 2020, notes that a key lever is ‘Models of care that promote high-quality, people-centred primary care and essential public health functions as the core of integrated health services throughout the course of life.’ Effective PHC therefore requires a coherent integration of PH and PC services, which involves a number of actions that include comprehensive PC services to a defined population, improved communication between PH and PC providers, knowledge sharing between individual- and population-focused health services, and strengthened and coordinated PC and PH surveillance functions.