HEALTH authorities around the globe need to engage frontline workers when designing and planning programs to bolster the uptake of services, International Council of Nursing CEO, Howard Catton, believes.
Speaking during an International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) webinar last night, involving leaders of the pharmacy, medical, nursing and physiotherapy professions, Catton said health professionals needed to be given a key role in developing health programs, as well as implementing them.
"What we're seeing is the more effective [COVID-19 vaccination] rollout programs appear to have much more significant healthcare professional engagement in their design," he said.
"We are agents who need to be involved in design and policy-making, not just to give us effective solutions to accessible healthcare, but other issues that have emerged that are important to health, but are also about the world we want to live in, in terms of social justice, of equity, of sustainable helath systems.
"These are all issues that health professionals collectively can bring a huge contribution to helping to design systems that are going to deliver all of that as well."
World Physiotherapy CEO, Jonathon Kruger, also called for health professionals to be engaged in policy planning, warning that issues around long COVID will place significant pressure on public health systems internationally.
"From a public health perspective it's critical that we get engaged in this conversation at all levels," he said.
"We need to be in on all the policy conversations, because we want to stop the old adage of people falling off the cliff."
"We want to stop them at the cliff not catch them down the bottom."
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