INTERCULTURAL INDICATORS

Abstract

The Final Declaration approved at the international workshop “Innovation and Development in Health: Integration of Complementary and Traditional Medicine in Public Health Systems”, held in October 2008 in Florence, Italy, stresses that health systems must be adapted and responsive to an intercultural approach to health and disease. In this approach, complementary and traditional medicine is an important tool for empowering and enriching the capacity of public health systems and improving quality of life. Continuing the discussion on this issue launched in the first issue of Universitas Forum, Nila Heredia shares the experience of the Andean Organism of Health, whose member countries are sharing and currently implementing an intercultural approach to health, intended as the acknowledgement and integration of the cultural aspects of traditional medicine within their public health systems. Heredia discusses how this strategy, and in particular the implementation of ad hoc health indexes, could improve people’s health.

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