Mapping national capacity to engage in health promotion: overview of issues and approaches.

This paper reviews approaches to the mapping of resources needed to engage in health promotion at the country level. There is not a single way, or a best way to make a capacity map, since it should speak to the needs of its users as they define their needs. Health promotion capacity mapping is therefore approached in various ways. At the national level, the objective is usually to learn the extent to which essential policies, institutions, programmes and practices are in place to guide recommendations about what remedial measures are desirable. In Europe, capacity mapping has been undertaken at the national level by the WHO for a decade. A complimentary capacity mapping approach, HP-Source.net, has been undertaken since 2000 by a consortium of European organizations including the EC, WHO, International Union for Health Promotion and Education, Health Development Agency (of England) and various European university research centres. The European approach emphasizes the need for multi-methods and the principle of triangulation. In North America, Canadian approaches have included large- and small-scale international collaborations to map capacity for sustainable development. US efforts include state-level mapping of capacity to prevent chronic diseases and reduce risk factor levels. In Australia, two decades of mapping national health promotion capacity began with systems needed by the health sector to design and deliver effective, efficient health promotion, and has now expanded to include community-level capacity and policy review. In Korea and Japan, capacity mapping is newly developing in collaboration with European efforts, illustrating the usefulness of international health promotion networks. Mapping capacity for health promotion is a practical and vital aspect of developing capacity for health promotion. The new context for health promotion contains both old and new challenges, but also new opportunities. A large scale, highly collaborative approach to capacity mapping is possible today due to developments in communication technology and the spread of international networks of health promoters. However, in capacity mapping, local variation will always be important, to fit variation in local contexts.

Review of the sanitary epidemiological services in the Kyrgyz Republic: report on an interagency mission to the Kyrgyz Republic: Kyrgyzstan, 21 September–6 October 2000

In Kyrgyzstan, as in all former Soviet Union countries, a vertically organized sanitary epidemiological service (SES) is responsible for providing part of the services related to the health protection. Though SES acquired a relativelystrong position during the existence of the Soviet Union, currently SES faces serious financial problems of trying to make ends meet with a low level of spending about US$0.30 per capita in Kyrgyzstan at the end of the 1990s.Reforming the SES has lagged behind the development of other components of the health care system in the country. It became evident that, in spite of some plans to restructure the SES, the strategic vision of the reform still remained as a future challenge. Therefore, a review team was designated to include experts relevant to the three main functions of SES epidemiology, sanitary hygiene and laboratory services. The review covered how the SES operates and how it is structured, assessment of the existing functions and structures and the recommendations on how to revise and restructure SES. The ultimate purpose was to make the SES even more effective and efficient, keeping in mind the scarcity of financial and other resources.