Email Address
info@intuitivepublichealth.org
info@intuitivepublichealth.org
info@intuitivepublichealth.org
info@intuitivepublichealth.org
In most communities, people’s health relies on the health of their environment. The surrounding ecosystem provides them with goods and services such as water, food, medicine, fuel wood, building materials, and other resources. Population, Health, and Environment (PHE) strategic approaches aim to simultaneously improve access to health services and help communities manage natural resources in ways that allow them to improve their livelihoods and conserve biodiversity. (UASID, 2018). Cross-sectoral integration of interventions seeking to improve health and environment outcomes requires a shift in the lens through which organizations aspire to achieve development, by utilizing approaches that leverage the successes of health and environment interventions within the most marginalized communities.
Recognizing these positive development outcomes/successes calls for Population, Health, and Environment Integration that amplifies the successes of initiatives in health and the environment. Doing so allows for greater effectiveness, acceptance, reach, and sustainability whose benefits would be limited through single-sector strategic approaches.
The success of any intervention in population, health, and the environment (PHE) involves utilizing different stakeholders from within and beyond government, through a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach. Using a multistakeholder approach maximizes the possibility, effectiveness, and sustainability of policies that foster an enabling environment for local enablers and key players such as civil society organizations to provide or complement health and environmental services within underserved communities. Collaboration of actors from different sectors when designing and implementing any PHED ensures organizational learning and sharing of best practices, which may ultimately lead to better project/intervention designs, better policy advocacy, and more efficient policy implementation in communities. Despite these benefits, PHED integration through the use of a multistakeholder approach is not without some challenges. PHED interventions spanning across different sectors in any organization can be challenging since they involve an enhanced need for coordination and may also be prone to conflicts because of the different interests or viewpoints of the sectoral actors which may ultimately affect any stage of the intervention right from the design stage to the implementation phase.
In the design and implementation of any intervention on health and environment, it is critical to highlight the vulnerability of varying categories within communities. In Uganda, women in rural areas depend mainly on natural resources more than men, making them more vulnerable to climate change. In addition, women face socio-economic and political barriers, and this makes them more susceptible and vulnerable to disasters. (International Journal of Agricultural Technology, 2022). In recognition of this, PHED cross-sectoral approaches must thus seek not just to include women but rather must place women at the very core of the design and implementation of any intervention seeking to improve health, environment, and development outcomes in any community. Recognizing the various inequalities in the most underserved communities ensures that both men and women are not passive recipients of PHED integrative efforts but rather social actors who play a key role in effectively sustaining any development intervention within their community.