Strategic Planning and Basic Program Planning (WHO), Research Paper Example

The World Health Organization (WHO) was created by the United Nations to assist in post-World War II relief efforts. The WHO should be of interest to public health officials because people from other countries often visit our own. Furthermore, as people working toward human interest as a whole, the WHO represents the most powerful organization dedicated to the furtherance of human health.

Strategic Planning

Although WHO began as an international organization – that is, an organization that operated within certain countries but had little influence besides that, WHO has grown in prestige, power, and effectiveness such that it is the only recognized truly global health department (Brown, Cueto, & Fee, 2006).

As such, it is incumbent upon WHO to gear is future activity is way that most effectively allocate resources. Based on available and projected resources, it would be the responsibility of the WHO to direct resources in such a way as to most effectively combat the spread and incidence of disease, as well as continue to tend to other, perhaps, less invasive global health problems. This is called basic planning, the immediate allocation of resources to a particular problem.

Basic Planning

One example of basic planning is how WHO improved surgical care in many countries. Finding that less developed countries had scarce and often dangerous surgical procedures available to people who could not afford healthcare, WHO moved to create a toolkit and textbook to assist practitioners in dealing with these problems (Bickler & Spiegel, 2010). In so doing, it decreased the probability of surgical oversight for people who needed it most.

References

Bickler, S.W. & Spiegel, D. (2010). Improving Surgical Care in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Pivotal Role for the World Health Organization. World J Surg, 34:386–390.

Brown, T. M., Cueto, M. & Fee, E. (2006). The World Health Organization and the Transition from “International” to “Global” Public Health. American Journal of Public Health, 96(1): 62-72.