Aging: the main challenge of the 21st century int the political management of health services

Abstract

Introduction. Never before in the history and evolution of national health and social security systems has the need for a thorough critical reflection on the administrative efficiency of current models of care in the provision, quality and safety of health services, concentrated by the nature of the epidemiological profile of the population, demand behaviour and the limitations of their management, almost exclusively, in disease care; the classic paradigm of attention based on the theory of the biomedical model, which establishes risk factors as variables at the individual level, based on the principle that diseases and their symptoms and signs, come from an anomaly or from an evil functioning of organic systems. As is observed, even in today's times, in the absence of a systematic and more rigorous analysis of new historical contexts and constant changes in the social, economic and cultural determinants of the modern world, they have been designed and developed public policies that have generally failed to ensure fairness in people's rights to timely and comprehensive attention to their health-maintaining needs and quality of life, especially in the growing population of people older adulthood. Methodology: For the realization of this editorial, a bibliographic review was carried out, with selection of articles in different databases, such as PsycInfo, Scopus, Google Scholar, Medline, PubMed, EBSCO Health, Cochrane, among others, in order to establish the relationship between the great challenge of the world's current population demographic sprees, their impact on the demand for public services, and the need to rethink public policies structural determinants of health. Results: It is possible to identify the magnitude and complexity of the phenomenon of human aging and the need to rethink the process of formulating social policy in health, from the perspective of the determinants health and care for the true needs of the elgrowing population. Within the framework of these results, this editorial is aimed at objectively drawing attention to the phenomenon of population ageing, its impact on public health policies and the need to rethink the political management of health services with an emphasis on health promotion.