Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Series editors’ preface
- List of figures and tables
- List of abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Foundations and horizons of universal health coverage
- 1 Studying health, health systems, and universalism
- 2 Tracing conceptions of health and universalism amid world transformations (1920–60)
- 3 The period of alternatives: the NIEO and the basic needs approach (1960–79)
- 4 Clues for convergence: neoliberal adjustment (1979–98)
- 5 New goals, dynamic agendas, and the conjoining of movements in universal health coverage
- 6 From cube to umbrella: UHC’s path to the SDGs
- 7 UHC and universalism in health: horizons
- Conclusion: Foundations and horizons
- References
- Index
7 - UHC and universalism in health: horizons
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 September 2025
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Series editors’ preface
- List of figures and tables
- List of abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Foundations and horizons of universal health coverage
- 1 Studying health, health systems, and universalism
- 2 Tracing conceptions of health and universalism amid world transformations (1920–60)
- 3 The period of alternatives: the NIEO and the basic needs approach (1960–79)
- 4 Clues for convergence: neoliberal adjustment (1979–98)
- 5 New goals, dynamic agendas, and the conjoining of movements in universal health coverage
- 6 From cube to umbrella: UHC’s path to the SDGs
- 7 UHC and universalism in health: horizons
- Conclusion: Foundations and horizons
- References
- Index
Summary
Introduction
I wish to submit that we should take paragraph 3.8 under Goal 3 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly Resolution on 25 September 2015, as a crucial milestone – if not the crucial milestone – to be leveraged globally to advocate for UHC. … To highlight the importance of clarity of purpose, I feel tempted to rely on the currently fashionable use of tautologies by some political leaders and say: universal health care is universal health care. The term UNIVERSAL should not allow nuances that justify or give rise to social exclusion. Much progress has been made in developing the concept of effective coverage, not least at the WHO. All must start by embracing this concept and even perfect it to ensure true universality. (Zedillo, 2017, emphasis in original)
This is how Ernesto Zedillo, the former president of Mexico and a member of the group The Elders, described the importance of the inclusion of universal health coverage (UHC) in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) agenda during a plenary titled ‘The Political Economy of Social Inclusion’ at the 2017 Prince Mahidol Award Conference (PMAC) in Bangkok. By 2017, UHC had emerged as the most recognizable constellation consisting of old and new components, currents and individual movements, which have their own independent motion, just like stars forming a constellation, slowly changing over time.
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- Universal Health CoverageFoundations and Horizons, pp. 168 - 197Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2025
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