ICIC25 Lisbon, Portugal

SDG 3 Good Health and Wellbeing is about ensuring healthy lives and promoting wellbeing for all at all ages. This aligns with an integrated care that takes a holistic approach to health that goes beyond the absence of disease. One of its key targets is achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC). UHC “means that all people have access to the full range of quality health services they need, when and where they need them, without financial hardship. It covers the full continuum of essential health services, from health promotion to prevention, treatment, rehabilitation, and palliative care across the life course” (WHO).

SDG 10 aims to reduce inequality within and among countries. Inequality threatens long-term social and economic development, harms poverty reduction and destroys people’s sense of fulfilment and self-worth. This connects with an increasingly important area within the integrated care movement, which we have gradually been exploring in past conferences: the importance of inclusive health and population health approaches to supporting access to care, experience of care, and better outcomes.

SDG 11 “Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable” and SDG 13 “Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impact” brings the role of integrated care to the centre of this important global conversation. This last theme is novel and groundbreaking for the integrated care field. It acknowledges the impact of integrated health and care services on environmental resources, and how health and care systems play an important role in tackling climate change by taking sustainability as a consideration in the how care is organised and delivered.