Work toward this outcome aims to increase capacity to prevent and reduce morbidity, disability, and mortality caused by communicable diseases, while fostering access to interventions throughout the life course that address equity and human rights. Interventions are directed not only at health threats, but also at their social and environmental determinants. Emphasis will be on:

a) Strengthening health promotion and personal and family self-care, with a focus on rights and duties in the prevention of communicable diseases, in accordance with national law.

b) Coordination with actors involved in addressing risk factors and the determinants of health, including for surveillance of disease trends and impact on public health.

c) Developing stakeholder capacity to address risk factors and the determinants of health, including for surveillance.

d) Increasing access to interventions for waterborne, neglected, and vector-borne diseases, considering social and environmental determinants of health.

e) Increasing implementation of policies, strategies, and interventions to reduce risk and improve access as a means to tackle sexually transmitted infections, blood-transmitted infections, HIV/AIDS, viral hepatitis, and tuberculosis.

f) Increasing access to comprehensive, quality health services and interventions to prevent, diagnose, and treat infectious diseases throughout the life course, with a primary health care and universal health approach.

g) Increasing access to public health interventions to prevent infections caused by resistant pathogens acquired in the community or in health services.

h) Increasing vaccination coverage, especially for hard-to-reach populations and communities, and continuation of activities to control, eradicate, and eliminate vaccine-preventable diseases.

i) Increasing access to interventions for food safety along the food supply chain to prevent food-borne illnesses, including infections produced by resistant pathogens.

j) Increasing access to interventions against zoonotic diseases, especially to prevent transmission from infected animals to people, with a One Health approach.

k) Implementing effective mechanisms focused on the rational use of antibiotics to reduce the impact of antimicrobial resistance on public health.

Note: For further details on the scope of this Outcome, please refer to the PAHO Strategic Plan 20-25 Document.