Sustainable preventive integrated child health care: reflections on the importance of multidisciplinary and multisectoral stakeholder engagement

ABSTRACT

Worldwide, 85% of all children who die are under the age of five. A recent scoping review examining the literature from 2000 to 2021 shows the importance of sustainable integrated preventive child health care for improving child health, enhancing the uptake of preventive child health services, and decreasing health-care costs. In 2022, we organised a stakeholder workshop in Uganda to discuss and contextualise the findings of the scoping review. The workshop took place under the umbrella of the Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Health, a virtual collaborative centre co-hosted by Makerere University in Uganda and Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. The workshop convened multidisciplinary and multisectoral stakeholders, including parents, nurses, paediatricians, nutritionists, village health team members, religious leaders, social workers, teachers, lawyers, health and climate researchers, and representatives from the police, the agricultural sector, the Ministry of Health, the World Health Organization, and other international and national non-governmental organisations, among others. We reflect on the importance of multidisciplinary and multisectoral stakeholder engagement, not only in building bridges between research and practice but also in linking sectors and connecting people for sustainable preventive integrated child health care. Though an important step, this workshop was only a first step; over time, relationships must be nurtured, multisectoral systems built and research and policy closely connected. We hope this workshop will not remain a one-off event but becomes an institutionalised effort that sparks action for sustainable preventive integrated child health care in Kampala and beyond, and sustainable health for all.

KEYWORDS:

• Children under 5
• prevention
• sustainable development goals
• Uganda
• contextualisation
• collaboration

Responsible Editor Stig Wall

Responsible Editor Stig Wall

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Lubega Martin and others for having participated in the stakeholder workshop. We are grateful to the Swedish Research Council (VR Links grant 2020-04203), which supported the conduct of the workshop.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author contributions

OB conceptualised the work. All authors revised the work critically for important intellectual content, approved the final version of the work, and agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

Paper context

A recent scoping review showed the importance of sustainable integrated preventive child health care globally for improving child health. As the contextualisation of the findings requires multidisciplinary and multisectoral stakeholder engagement, we organised a workshop in Uganda. The workshop helped build bridges between research and practice, link sectors, and connect people. We hope this workshop will become an institutionalised effort that sparks action for sustainable preventive integrated child health care and sustainable health for all.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council (VR Links grant 2020-04203).