What is the context?
The need for fundamental transformation in our health systems has never been more apparent. Already the world faces a shortage of 13 million health workers. Now, in the context of COVID-19, our dependencies on a stretched health workforce are brought to the fore, demanding creative, urgent, and difficult solutions.
People are asked to steer clear of COVID-19 hotspots such as hospitals and clinics, to use telemedicine or hotlines where they exist, to self-diagnose using symptom guidelines, and to self-medicate. Preventative and curative care jostle together, both equally important, both challenged to be delivered in tandem. World over, millions volunteered almost overnight to support continuity of health services, with clinicians coming out of retirement, and others lending their non-clinical expertise and labor. At individual, community, and health system levels, we are witnessing an overnight transformation in how people use and organize healthcare.
[ss_click_to_tweet tweet=”For COVID-19, self-care requires a carefully choreographed set of interactions between health workers and individuals to enable people to take greater control over their healthcare.” content=”For COVID-19, self-care requires a carefully choreographed set of interactions between health workers and individuals to enable people to take greater control over their healthcare.” style=”default”]
As COVID-19 moved from outbreak to epidemic and now pandemic, and with the significant possibility that for the next 18 months we see episodic outbreaks of COVID-19, one immediate need—and potentially lasting health system transformation—will be learning what services and information can be provided with less dependency on health workers.
These measures are both to protect heroic frontline health workers, but also to ensure the most effective healthcare can be provided at scale. In this context, self-care is not only occurring, but has rapidly become a critical answer in the health system response to COVID-19.
What is self-care?
For the uninitiated, the World Health Organization (WHO) defines self-care as “the ability of individuals, families and communities to promote health, prevent disease, maintain health, and cope with illness and disability with or without the support of a healthcare provider,” and add in subsequent publications that “self-care interventions are among the most promising and exciting new approaches to improve health and well-being, both from a health systems perspective and for people who use these interventions.”