Addressing national and regional health needs: a framework for health planning

Completion of the first decade since the Alma-Ata Declaration of 'health for all' (1978) has led to numerous appraisals, in international forums, of progress achieved by the current primary health care strategy. Although this strategy appears to have contributed to improvements in selected health outcomes, changing circumstances in many developing countries may now require a more flexible and country-specific approach to health care programming. This article argues for the development of a pragmatic framework: to articulate problems which should be addressed in the development of national health programs; and, to organize concepts and methodologies to address these problems. Such a framework should enable an assessment of currently implicit value judgments, and enable strategies to be considered that assess several input and output variables simultaneously. Moreover, this framework would, we believe, further the goal of improved health delivery at a national level, and serve as a guide for further methodologic and conceptual development.