Scaling up health promotion interventions in the era of HIV/AIDS: challenges for a rights based approach

A sustained scaled up response to global public health challenges such as HIV/AIDS will require a functioning and efficient health system, based on the foundation of strong primary health care. Whilst this is necessary, it is not sufficient. Health promotion strategies need to be put into place to better engage and support families and communities in preventing disease, optimize caring, creating the demand for services and holding service providers to account. There will have to be a move away from the traditional model whereby the problem of HIV/TB/malaria is to be solved by merely increasing resources to a centralized bureaucracy that tries to increase the supply of services including health promotion messages. Development projects and programs that succeed are based on understanding of local practice and preferences, rather than on internationally 'generalized models' of how people or villages should behave and what they should want. This paper will first briefly review different approaches to scaling up health promotion interventions, some of the key obstacles in scaling up and then suggest some possible solutions with a focus on a human rights based approach. This approach changes the emphasis from the content of the message to the characteristics of a community's organisations and institutions. Scaling up occurs as a process of association between state actors and civil society that is planned strategically and involves a sharing of experience and a strong learning process among the association partners. A human rights-based approach can facilitate such an approach through developing a common vision, delineating roles and responsibility and facilitating communication channels for the most vulnerable. But this will require health development agencies to pursue a more overt political agenda.