The Self Care Academic Research Unit (SCARU), of which ISF is a founding partner, was invited to participate in the Wilton Park Dialogue: Reimagining global health: self-care interventions and implications for healthcare.

The 3-day conference in Sussex took place in September 2018 and included representation from WHO Geneva, the United Nations University, the BMJ, the World Bank and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation.

An Open Letter from ISF was published at the conference illustrating the widely cited 7 Pillars of Self-Care which describes self-care activities for disease prevention and promotes self-management of long-term conditions by sustained and positive behaviour change.

Self-care is a field that is rapidly advancing on many fronts and could have the potential to increase coverage of evidence-based, quality health interventions, thereby providing choice and empowering people to make decisions in relation to their health and well-being. Discussions focused on places of access of self-care interventions, including at home, via pharmacies and through digital and mobile technologies which are now an important source of services, information and interventions, and thereby changing the expectations with regards to health and health seeking behaviours.