Health, Nutrition, and Social Development

Good health is essential to human happiness and well-being. It also makes an important contribution to economic progress, as healthy people live longer, are more productive, and save more. However, access to quality health care and good health is not available to everyone.

Many factors influence health status and a country's ability to provide quality health services for its people. Ministries of health are important actors, but so are other government departments, donor organizations, civil society groups and communities themselves. For example – investments in roads can improve access to health services; inflation targets can constrain health spending; and civil service reform can create opportunities to hiring more health workers.

Delivery of appropriate health care requires financial and human resources, reliable health information, and policies aimed at ensuring the most disadvantaged are reached. UNICON works with government departments, health service providers and communities to facilitate and support the delivery of consistent, effective healthcare solutions.

We provide different strategies for health reform, based on a country's specific needs, that include; decentralization and centralization, substitution policies, redefinition of the functions of hospitals and primary care, creation of new roles for professionals, improved management, cost-containment and market orientation. No matter the strategy adopted, the aims of reform are to provide health care that is oriented towards outcome, based on evidence and focused on effectiveness and efficiency, to increase the availability of services, patient satisfaction and the quality of care.

UNICON provides health system financing support in designing and assessing health financing systems and reforms. Guided by the goals of health systems, this support is provided through:

• technical assistance and policy dialogue with countries; 
• facilitating exchange of evidence and experience between countries; and 
• collaborating with partner agencies involved in supporting health financing reforms.

UNICON also assists in reproductive health strategies and policies to improve the reproductive and sexual health of people – children and young people, women and men – by strengthening human resources and conducting relevant research at the national and regional levels. Our main strategies in reproductive health are to:

• strengthen the use of evidence-based high-quality interventions in reproductive health within primary and specialized health care; 
• promote the inclusion of reproductive health in policies of other sectors such as education and social welfare; and
• advocate gender equity in health policies and health care.

Another important factor is Nutrition. It is an input to and foundation for health and development. Interaction of infection and malnutrition is well-documented. Better nutrition means stronger immune systems, less illness and better health. Healthy children learn better. Healthy people are stronger, are more productive and more able to create opportunities to gradually break the cycles of both poverty and hunger in a sustainable way. Better nutrition is a prime entry point to ending poverty and a milestone to achieving better quality of life.

In nutrition, we provide technical support aiming at improving:

• effectiveness of comprehensive and integrated national nutrition policies and programs;
• scaling up of measures to reach the nutrition-related components of MDG1, to improve child-survival (MDG4), and contribute to the attainment of all MDGs;
• promotion of healthy diets through the life course and the reduction of obesity and diet-related chronic diseases;
• country-led response to address the impact on food security.

UNICON helps in poverty reduction by involving communities in development of capacity to improve the access and quality of social and health systems, in strengthening the capacity of local communities to support vulnerable groups.

Women, men and children all play vital roles in community life, yet often these roles are unrecognized. In our assignments, we implement culturally appropriate strategies, which take into account the links between health, education, access to resources, gender, ethnicity and poverty; all necessary for integrated and sustainable development.

UNICON is developing and implementing pilot interventions to support orphans and vulnerable children. Our policy and strategy development ranges from reviewing policy options and making recommendations on strategy, to working intensively with decision makers to produce a strategy for implementing, monitoring and evaluating the results.

Many development programs fail because they do not take into account the complex social relationships-based on gender bias, power and status-within families, households, organizations and communities. Our gender and social analysis look at relationships and distribution and control of power and resources within and between these groups. This learning is used to design and deliver higher quality programs and empower disenfranchised groups.

UNICON provides gender and social support services so that women and marginalized groups have a stronger voice and become a central focus of positive change. We use a holistic approach to create more favorable incentives and structures for equitable development and assist in design and implementation of gender-balanced and socially sensitive programs with lasting value.