Chapter 7

Abstract

Health, economic development and human development are inextricably linked. They are linked through the array of institutions and organizations whose actions, be they directed towards economic growth, building livelihoods, delivering medications or providing services at community clinics, are enabled only through a convergence of social and economic forces. They are linked because of the diverse sectors which create inputs to health conditions, to social conditions, and to economic conditions that drive the greater endeavor of improving capabilities and choices for people and the societies they create. They are linked through a cycle in which human capabilities feed into avenues of economic growth. Likewise, the economic growth and the magnitude of national and household income create opportunities and resources to invest in the goods that enhance human capital and quality of life. Health, economic and human development are also connected across geographic and institutional scales. Policies and actions initiated at the global scale, and resources made available through networks of international actors, influence the reality of development and health experienced by large populations, by communities, by households and by individuals. Careful consideration of the impact global actions will have across these levels, and across the diversity of abilities and vulnerabilities contained within each, is therefore warranted. But the trajectory of health and development experienced in any one setting is not dictated solely through top-down policies or resource allocation. The actions of communities and individual enterprises contained therein can also resonate upward.