Public Health Promotion: World Health Organization

Introduction

Nowadays, several prominent nonprofit organizations seek to contribute to people’s health and quality of life. Undoubtedly, the World Health Organization (WHO) can be considered the most influential among them. Found in 1948, this entity now serves as the uniting platform for 194 Member States (Cueto et al., 2019; WHO, n.d.e). According to Cueto et al. (2019), its main areas of focus include “centralized epidemiological surveillance, campaigns against epidemics, disease control, and the reform of health systems” (p. 1). However, as with any other organization, WHO has to monitor its activities and business processes to assess one’s effectiveness and understand the areas that necessitate improvement. For this reason, the current report will discuss the role of WHO’s mission and vision in promoting health, factors that assist and hinder the organization’s progress, its impact, and its dependence on policies, legislation, and funding. Moreover, it will elaborate on how nurses can be involved with the organization to help promote health in the local communities.

The Organization’s Mission and Vision

WHO is a huge organization that includes more than 8000 professional workers and many volunteers, and partnering companies. Thus, mission and vision are really important part of the organization that helps to ensure that all the elements work to achieve the same goal. According to the WHO’s official website, its mission is “to promote health, keep the world safe, and serve the vulnerable” (WHO, n.d.c, para. 3). On the other hand, the organization’s vision is building “a world in which all peoples attain the highest possible level of health” (WHO, n.d.c, para. 3). Therefore, it is seen that both mission and vision serve to remind all the workers and managers of the organization that their utmost goal is to contribute to public health and safety improvements. As evidence that the latter is not just an attractive marketing tool that nobody cares about, the organization’s official website lists over 60 initiatives that the company actively manages both locally and internationally. As for the former, for instance, in 2019, WHO and the Ghanaian government started a campaign against malaria by providing free vaccines for the public (WHO, n.d.b). On the international level, the organization launched the Global Diabetes Compact which aims to inform people about the prevention of diabetes and ensure that all diagnosed patients have access to adequate treatment (WHO, n.d.d). Thus, WHO seeks to address specific local problems as well as issues that are present all over the world.

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