Hertzman – health platform

One of the things about the health care system globally is that it’s actually working better than many people would imagine. When we think internationally we’re usually thought to think about war-torn areas but if you leave aside the war-torn areas the fact is over the last 30 years the idea of promulgating primary health care platforms around the world has largely worked. And so primary health care is in more communities around this planet than anything else, including school.  

So we have outposts, we have people, we have vehicles for bringing nurturant environments to people who are going to have children, to identify vulnerabilities, to improve parenting skills, to connect with the home, to connect families with resources that can help them support their children. And the notion of that model being spread globally is real and we see models of that in middle income countries like Chile, in mobilized societies like Cuba. In Sub-Saharan African societies like Kenya and Eritrea where the platforms are being used for these purposes. And so the idea that the primary health care system is where we find the children and find the families and connect them through with things, I think is a sensible, global kind of policy objective.