Bringing a Health Promotion perspective to COVID-19 response by EUPHA-HP, IUHPE and UNESCO Chair

A Health Promotion Focus on COVID-19. Keep the Trojan horse out of our health systems: Promote health for ALL in times of crisis and beyond!”.

Ongoing discussion about the range of actions needed during the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak and Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is calling all of us to bring forward our thoughts and experiences about how best to cope with the multiple challenges we are facing regarding COVID-19. The Health Promotion section of the European Public Health Association, IUHPE and the UNESCO Chair Global Health & Education would like to share five talking points that could evolve into a more refined and targeted public health discussion on the implications of this pandemic, from a health promotion perspective.

As discussions worldwide bring topics such as health, equity, sustainability, solidarity or human dignity to a new level of implications, a systematic perspective is missing to bring these themes together with the disease prevention and curative efforts in the public health framework. This is where health promotion has the expertise to bring these extremely relevant issues together, to offer a comprehensive approach, in a common effort to support the medical care systems to face the sudden burden that was laid in their hands.

Authors: Luis Saboga-Nunes, Diane Levin-Zamir, Uwe Bittlingmayer, Paolo Contu, Paulo Pinheiro, Valerie Ivassenko, Orkan Okan, Liane Comeau, Margaret Barry, Stephan Van den Broucke, Didier Jourdan

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