The transformation of health systems is essential if countries want to be able to respond to the needs and expectations of their citizens and if they are to continue to have good health outcomes. ‘Thinking about the organisation of healthcare must have the ambition of transforming the healthcare system. It’s the only way to respond to the enormous challenges we face,’ argued the dean of the NOVA National School of Public Health (NOVA NSPH), explaining that the Academy can play a very important role in implementing measures.
Sónia Dias was speaking at the Assembly of the Republic, as part of a session commemorating the 45th anniversary of the National Health Service (SNS), organised by the Parliamentary Health Commission, a moment she took to praise the role the SNS has played and the results achieved, even with the challenges that are well known.
The dean of NOVA NSPH recalled the role the school has played in training leaders and professionals for over five decades, and for half of that time it has even been the ‘training arm of the Ministry of Health’.
On the theme of the commemorative session, which focused on the organisation of healthcare, Sónia Dias pointed out that the changes in the country’s socio-demographic and epidemiological profile require a transformation of healthcare systems, which begins by changing the thinking behind the organisation of care and promoting the effective participation of citizens and other sectors.
‘The health sector alone will not address the major challenges (…). We need to be more ambitious and not just focus on organisational models,’ she said. ‘We need to change the paradigm so that we stop focussing only on illness and the sick (…) and focus on the possibility of keeping people healthy,’ she added.
For Sónia Dias, it is essential that everyone is involved in the various stages, such as deciding on public policies, designing strategies, implementation and monitoring, and it is also important to recognise failures so that progress can be made more quickly. In this field, she also considered that Public Health is fundamental to rethinking health systems and recalled the White Paper recently published by NOVA NSPH and more than 80 national and international experts, which summarises the priority recommendations for the future of Public Health.
‘Academia can play an extremely important role in the organisation of care, trying to find evidence that, from the outset, supports the organisation and the new models or impact assessment (…) But academia can also play an important role in the study of implementation processes, to see how the measures are going, what resources there are and what the success or failure of the measures is due to,’ she said.