On Thursday 17 March 2011, Professor Ilona Kickbusch, Director of the Graduate Institute’s Global Health Programme, delivered a closing address on the challenges of governance for health to participants at the conference Healthcare in Europe – More for less: vision or illusion?

The event – organised by The Economist with sponsorship from global healthcare companies such as Abbott, Sanofi-aventis and Janssen Pharmaceuticals – provided an opportunity to engage a largely private sector audience on the issues of global health and Europe’s contribution to managing health challenges in a globalised world. “Global governance for health implies taking responsibility for the determinants of health in new ways,” said Professor Kickbusch. “Health is part of a joint responsibility to manage globalisation, be it through trade policy, security policy, agricultural policy, environmental policy or foreign affairs.”

Europe has an important role to play in ensuring better global health security, stronger, fairer and safer systems for delivering health, more effective international health organisations, and freer and fairer trade for better health. However, that is not all. European actors and healthcare industry leaders in particular can also contribute by strengthening how evidence for policy-making is developed and used, and how the poorest populations are brought into the health system and healthcare market through socially progressive commercial practices that target “bottom-of-the-pyramid” consumers.

A major theme running throughout the conference was the issue of transparency in the health system and the healthcare market. Governments often don’t know where to invest, or are reluctant to raise health sector budgets because of poor data collection on health system performance. Similarly, healthcare businesses and governments have difficulty choosing investment strategies when patients and doctors maintain strict confidentiality over patient records. Professor Kickbusch reminded all participants that this recurrent debate too quickly focuses on the privacy of patient records as the key issue without discussing transparency within industry or governments. A more effective and productive system would require transparency on all sides.

The role of patients, the state and industry – as well as the need to develop strong principles of good governance such as a commitment to transparency – will be some of the issues at the heart of a forthcoming study that the Global Health Programme is conducting on governance for health in the 21st century. Led by Professor Kickbusch, and commissioned by the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe, this study will inform the new regional health policy for WHO Europe.

The Graduate Institute’s Global Health Programme is a research endeavour which concentrates on examining links between health, foreign policy, trade and development.