Leadership, Governance and SDG 3

Health promotion movements have been more active all over the world since the development of “Health for All” initiated by the World Health Organization (WHO) over 40 years ago. SDG 3 has provided clearer goals and targets for leaders to ensure and sustain healthy lives and well-being. “Health for All” and SDGs 3 could be applicable to all nations, but it is not easy to achieve effective priority setting, innovation in policymaking or implementation of sustainable solutions. Leadership and governance are important in community health to ensure that the healthcare needs of populations are met. WHO has provided leadership on global health matter and brought multiple partners together towards achieving common health goals. Strengthening the quality and equity of health services, both centralisation and decentralisation are ways to improve the health governance structure in improving managerial capacity of health services. Countries like Germany, United Kingdom and Canada, with better developed healthcare systems adopt different but effective leadership style and governance structure to sustain healthcare quality and health management across health departments. While in countries with less developed healthcare system like Mexico and Zimbabwe, health policy prioritisation is important to support healthcare planning. All governments have the responsibilities to revisit and evaluate the governance for health and well-being as a continuing process to address health challenges strategically. With examples and reference to selected targets of SDG 3, this chapter will review the leadership and governance in different regions, with the objective of health improvement for all ages of the population.