Harvard's Julio Frenk Talks to AMSA
(photo credit:Noticias e Información de la Presidencia)
Julio Frenk is the dean of Harvard's School of Public Health, and former Minister of Health for Mexico. He recently did an interview with the American Medical Student Association Global Pulse blog. He talked about his approach to global health. It's a nice overview of global heath from one of the most experienced people in this field. Some highlights:
About being Minister of Health in Mexico:
I had been studying health systems from all over the world for twenty years before becoming Minister of Health, and I had been developing a number of ideas and publishing in a number of academic journals, as well as popular magazines and newspapers, about better ways of reforming a health system in order to achieve goals in quality, efficiency, and financing. I was then given the opportunity to apply everything I had been thinking for two decades in a period of national reform... I found that using good evidence was a very persuasive tool.
About ethics and health care:
Good health care should not be part of the reward system of a society. It is instead a condition so that a reward can be considered fair because you do not have a fair society if every generation does not have the same opportunities to achieve, and health and education are the fundamental elements of equality of opportunity. So that defines the ethical pillar.
About challenges in global health:
The biggest challenge is [achieving] global health equity. There is still a huge gap between what is achievable with our existing knowledge and technology, and what we are actually achieving with our current practices and health systems. That gap needs to be closed.
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