• is a/an

  • state of complete well-being

  • universal human right

  • a basic fundamental component of quality of life, human development, human security...

  • need

• which comprises the physical, mental and social dimensions of human life

• which depends on 

  • intrinsic human characteristics

  • human behaviour

  • environmental factors

  • social factors (i.e. livelihood, economy, social inclusion...) 

• necessary to reach human potential

• factored in to measure human development

• may be deteriorated by

  • ailments, psychological trauma, uncertainty

• scarcity of food, water or basic services

• violent conflict and its corollaries

• may be protected/improved by services and interventions

• • which comprise an activity sector (also referred to as health) 

  • provided by humanitarian and State actors

Organisation subcorpora present unique and shared collocations with other organisation types. Unique collocations allow to discover what a particular organisation type says about health that others do not.  

Top unique collocates for NGO_Fed include AMREF (African Medical and Research Foundation), hero (from health hero), MSF-supported, Caritas, Sans (from Medecins Sans Frontieres) Corps (from International Medical Corps), Oxfam, age-friendly, outlying (from outlying health facility, outlying health post) and Merlin

NGO documents feature BPHWT (Back Pack Health Worker Team), SCA (Swedish Committee for Afghanistan), mother-child (from  mother-child health), Burma, shura (from health shura), pack (from back pack health worker and emergency health pack), AHA (African Humanitarian Action), Americares and EHA (Emanuel Hospital Association).

RC unique collocates with the highest scores are ICRC-supported, wounded, structures, penitentiary, ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross), places, crescent, red, ICRC-trained and violence-affected.

Documents from IGO generated the following top unique collocates: unspecified, UNFPA (United Nations Fund for Population Activities), out-of-pocket (from out-of-pocket health cost and out-of-pocket health expenditure), USD (US dollars), UNWRA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East), Lancet (from The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change), IOM (International Organization for Migration), deprivation and corruption.

WHS documents do not contain unique collocates. 

Shared collocations allow to discover matching elements with organisations talk about health. These constitute intersections between subcorpora.

Top collocates shared by 2 organisation types are beneficiaries (RC+NGO), good-quality (RC+IGO), lasting (NGO_Fed+NGO), VE (RC+NGO), IDPs (RC+NGO), convergence (NGO_Fed+NGO) and STA (RC+NGO).

Top collocates shared by 3 organisation types include eye (RC+NGO_Fed+NGO), spending (NGO_Fed+NGO+IGO), zone (NGO_Fed+NGO+IGO), club (RC+NGO_Fed+NGO), weak (NGO_Fed+NGO+IGO), existing (NGO_Fed+NGO+IGO), transform (NGO_Fed+NGO+IGO) and live-saving (NGO_Fed+NGO+IGO).

Top collocates shared by 4 organisations (RC+NGO_Fed+NGO+IGO)  are facility, centre, primary, nutrition, public, improve, professional, promotion, clinic and hygiene.

Top collates shared by all organisations analysed (RC+NGO_Fed+NGO+IGO+WHS) include reproductive, care, mental, worker, maternal, education, service, sexual, system, access, basic and insurance.

Verb collocates are useful in determining key relations between concepts. On the left is a diagram that represents verbs of which health is the subject (in green) and the object (in pink).

At first sight, heath collocates with verbs more frequently as an object than as a subject. This indicates that humanitarian actors mention health as an object focusing on the following dimensions:

1. improvement (improve)

2. threats and deterioration (affect, threaten)

3. provision and promotion (promotion, ensure, deliver, address)

4. protection (protect, restore, maintain)

As a subject, health collocates with many verbs, albeit with fewer occurrences. It should also be noted that many nouns may be erroneously detected as verbs. Words like centre, need, care or programme can function as verbs, but they are nouns in this case (e.g. health centre, health need care or health programme). This leaves very few verbs that take health as a subject.

Humanitarians use health as subject to focus on the following dimensions:

1. improvement (improve)

2. deterioration (deteriorate)

3. description of health factors (depend)

• Africa needs more investment in research to produce quality evidence to tackle social, economic and health challenges.

• Economic growth is key to addressing poor health in countries dependent on aid.

Attitudes to health practices

• Health campaigns may be met with opposition by their target audiences where health practices are perceived as foreign and as a threat to local culture.

• Health professionals, together with the media and civil society, should be influencers of attitudes for societal change.

• Labelling suffering as a disorder through the use of standardised medical definitions and categories might in fact lead local people to invalidate their own culturally accepted methods of dealing with health threats and challenges.

• Family planning, adolescent health services, pregnancy in minors, violence against women and HIV prevention may be perceived as controversial in certain countries.

The vicious circle of stigma

• Health workers, patients and survivors of Ebola may face stigmatisation which prevents people from seeking medical help.

• Social exclusion may be an internal factor to health services.

• HIV may lead to social exclusion and should be treated as a development issue rather than just a public health one.

• Social stigma associated with HIV may be more challenging that the illness itself.

Old age

• Health professionals may dismiss health issues in elderly patients as just old age.

Improving health systems

• Surveillance systems may be useful to anticipate acute health crises and react to them. This requires developing international health strategies.

• Routine evaluation of public health programmes is insufficient. Including research scientists in public health programmes stimulates monitoring and evaluation, which may lead to effective promotion of universal health coverage.

• Rich countries should solve inefficiencies in their health systems, as well as focusing on preventive care.

• Rapid administrative human resource decentralisation is not recommended unless there are sufficient management expertise and accountability mechanisms.

Health system failure

• Health systems fail to improve capacity and anticipate needs due to short-term approaches.

• Health care systems may be affected by corruption and bureaucratisation.

• Institutional inefficiency in health system management may lead to low morale amongst health workers, leave rural areas understaffed and fail to recruit talented professionals due to nepotism.

• Humanity has sufficient financial and technological resources to tackle most health challenges, but many health systems remain weak and substandard.

• Common health policies usually aim at restructuring and downsizing facilities, reducing heath care personnel, improving the pay and training of remaining staff and reforming financing mechanisms (patient fees, insurance schemes, incentive-based payments for health).

• Health policy-makers do not employ evidence-based strategies due to a lack of reliable and up-to-date information.

• Investing in health service development early during response provides long term-results and facilitates recovery. Also, rapid rehabilitation of health systems after crises may re-establish the State's legitimacy, stabilise public services and allow civil society to address health inequalities.

• Policy-makers usually disregard health workers when designing or reforming health systems.

• It is believed that the availability of financial resources, skills and technology will converge to reduce maternal mortality and infectious and chronic diseases by 2030. There is still an open research question as to whether and how health policies and interventions will aid such convergence by strengthening health systems.

• Contemporary health challenges are too complex to be addressed by States alone.

• A lack of qualified medical staff is another challenge faced by the healths systems of many countries.

• Emigration and HIV affect the availability of health workers.

• The health workforce crisis in poor countries requires an urgent and coordinated response from the international community.

• Every country is facing health workforce challenges

• There is a shortage of health workers, especially in rural areas.

• Migration is a symptom of failing health systems in poor countries with high graduate unemployment.

• The WHO estimates that 57 countries (36 of which are in Africa) have a deficit of 2.4 million doctors, nurses and midwives.

• Africa is at the epicentre of the global health workforce crisis.

• People with health problems should be treated as individuals, considering their own familial and community contexts.

• People experience illness differently; health workers mediate between people and health services and should take into account such diversity.

• Public health is mostly based on biomedical approaches and efficiency, grounded on economic viability. However, suffering and health has an emotional, spiritual and philosophical component that is often overlooked.

• Time and geographical constrains make it difficult to deliver health care in developing countries. Sometimes, it is due to the cost of patented medicines.

• Humanitarian goals: safeguarding health with sustainable solutions and preparing health system for crises.

• Providing health care services through mobile health units in conflict environments is controversial due to hight cost, irregular service provision and logistical complexities.

• Humanitarian health action must be planned and coordinated to avoid duplication.

• Health response is often complicated by competing crisis and routine health demands.

• The effectiveness of the health component of crisis response is indicative of the adequacy of the overall humanitarian action.

• Smaller differences in health and education between the rich and the poor should attract a greater weight HDI by income quintiles than they currently have.

• Acute malnutrition is a symptom of systemic issues: tackling it requires a coordinated and long-term effort which takes into account poverty and food security issues.

• Hunger and malnutrition remain an a world's top public health issue and is a multifactorial challenge which may be aggravated by climate change.

• A debate on how to set priorities, scope and tools for tackling malnutrition is necessary, as it requires both food and health policies.

• Urbanisation poses new public health dangers due to congested environments.

• Urbanisation may stretch facilities and lead to health and security challenges .

• Insecurity hinders health service provision.

• Protracted crises create or exacerbate inter-communal tensions, leading to health challenges.

• Gender-based violence may increase during crises and requires specific responses.

• Non-communicable diseases are not been treated properly in humanitarian contexts.

• People often fail to distinguish mental health and mental illness. Mental health is an all-embracing notion which does not simply refer to the absence of illness.

• Mental health problems constitute a silent epidemic due to stigmatisation and under-resourced health systems.

• Health system intervention should integrate quality mental health care.

• Health systems in developing countries should consider the mental health and psychosocial needs of adolescent girls in post-conflict environments.