T he sustainable development goals (SDGs) formally promote universal health coverage as a key objective for the global health community. This focus on universal health coverage arose both from a desire to maintain the health gains achieved by the millennium development goals and from criticism that those goals were short term in nature and narrowly focused on disease specific approaches. 2 On 1...

A key but contentious aspect of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is the means of implementation (MOI). Many developing countries emphasize the importance of international assistance while developed countries focus more on domestic financing and the private sector. The text of the SDGs includes a broad range of MOI. However, a discussion has arisen about whether countries should prioritize s...

For the last 20 years, the international development debate has been dominated by two trends that seem at first to be heading in a similar direction. However, under closer scrutiny they differ with respect to their focus and underlying philosophies. These are on the one hand the agenda of reducing poverty in developing countries in its various dimensions (lack of income, education, water, polit...

The United Nations (UN) Rio+20 summit committed nations to develop a set of universal sustainable development goals (SDGs) to build on the millennium development goals (MDGs) set to expire in 2015. Research now indicates that humanity’s impact on Earth’s life support system is so great that further global environmental change risks undermining long-term prosperity and poverty eradication goals....

I n September 2015, under the leadership of United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, the international community took a huge step forward for people, the planet, and prosperity with the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) pave a brave path towards a world of equity and inclusion, health, including sexual and reproductive heal...

The United Nations (UN) is negotiating the Post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the predecessors of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). There is now an opportunity to include one of the disease categories with the greatest impact on the global burden of disease (GBD), namely mental illness. This letter presents the case for the inclusion of mental health within the SDGs, drawn f...

Editorials 310 January 2016 marked the beginning of a new era for health and development. It was the start of Transforming our world: the 2030 agenda for sustainable development and its accompanying sustainable development goals (SDGs). 1 All governments have committed to this ambitious sustainable agenda and its goals. The Global strategy for women's, children's and adolescents' health (2016– ...

The United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Agenda offers an opportunity to realise the right to health for all. The Agenda’s “interlinked and integrated” Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide the prospect of focusing attention and mobilising resources not just for the provision of health services through universal health coverage (UHC), but also for addressing the underlying social,...