medicusmundi campaign talks about Social Determinants of Health

Getting citizens to defend health as a right and mobilizing those responsible for creating better socio-sanitary policies, with a focus on Social Determinants of Health, was the goal outlined for this campaign.

Social Determinants of Health

The appeal to the awareness and participation of the population and institutions in improving the level of health in the community, was one of the main pillars of this campaign that was on the air for two months.

Does our health depend only on the quality of medical services provided? Or does society have a much more important role to play?

The campaign created and run by medicusmundi throughout the months of March and April, aimed to get all actors involved in the health sector in the city of Maputo to analyze and design this sector from the perspective of the Social Determinants of Health (SDH). The approach made it possible to carry out a comprehensive analysis of all the conditioning involved in the great universal objective of guaranteeing the Human Right (individual and collective) to Health, and which go beyond the existence of health infrastructures.

Through this campaign, medicusmundi sought to contextualize, sensitize and mobilize society to promote a change in behavior that allows it to escape from a simplistic perspective of the Right to Health, as something only dependent on the existence of health centers, and to understand the other causes and factors that contribute to making this right a reality.

According to the Constitution of the Republic of Mozambique, so that health is not a good, but rather a human right accessible to all, citizens also have a role to play and it is their duty to defend and promote public health. This appeal to the awareness and participation of the population and institutions in improving the level of health in the community, was one of the main pillars of this campaign supported by the Municipality of Barcelona and which included a television advertisement, a radio spot and an information leaflet. Through these pieces, some socioeconomic and political aspects that determine the contexts and living conditions that lead to inequalities in access to the right to health were mentioned, such as food, type of housing, access to education, among others.

Getting citizens to defend health as a right and mobilizing those responsible for the creation of better socio-health policies with a focus on Social Determinants of Health, was the main goal outlined.

Published on 09/07/20