Designing equitable speech-language pathology services in the Maldives to achieve Sustainable Development Goals 10...

The United Nations adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015 as a universal plan to address challenges experienced around the globe. SDG 4 focuses on inclusive and equitable education while SDG 10 aims to reduce inequality within and among countries. To achieve these goals for children with communication disabilities living in underserved communities, equitable access to services is required. Service delivery should be tailored to the unique characteristics of specific communities to best cater to the needs of the population. This commentary presents the Context-specific Service Delivery Framework (CSDF) that can be used to explore contexts systematically and identify suitable speech-language pathology service delivery approaches. CSDF focuses on the three dimensions of sustainability that are emphasised in the SDGs: environmental, social and economic.

We present how CSDF was developed in the case of one Majority world country, the Maldives. Five studies were conducted to complete CSDF and the findings were used to derive recommendations for service delivery approaches that could help achieve SDG 4 and SDG 10. These included, building capacity by using asset-based approaches, collaborating with service providers and the community, using population-based methods to focus on prevention of communication disabilities and using available technology to provide support.

Other underserved communities could also benefit from using CSDF to design equitable services for children with communication disabilities in their countries. This commentary paper focuses on SDG 4 and SDG 10.