Editorial: Primary healthcare for older people: Editorial comments for International Journal of Older People Nursing

摘要

This special issue of the International Journal of Older People Nursing is focused on older people in the environment of primary care. The concept of primary care is a relatively new impetus within healthcare systems. In 1978, the Alma Ata Declaration (World Health Organisation, 1978) was signed by most countries within the World Health Organisation and represented a major milestone in re-orientating health care to the communities where people lived and worked. This was envisaged through the establishment of epidemiological-based public health objectives founded on the concept of ‘health for all’. These aspirational goals focused on a perspective shift within healthcare discourses and policy from health being considered within a myopic perspective, as simply the opposite to illness and disease, to a broader consideration of health within a complex ecological framework. The Alma Ata (1978) also supported a debunking of the hierarchical, patriarchal position of healthcare professionals as ownership of health was constructed as the domain of each individual, community and population. Thus, health was democratised, in the sense that people had a right and duty to participate individually and collectively in their own health, with the ultimate goal of self-care.