alf the world’s population spends less than five minutes a year with a doctor, on average. Daniella Foster of Bayer shared that striking figure during a Diplomatic Courier panel at the SDG Media Zone, noting that’s hardly enough time for introductions. Beyond these brief encounters, most people manage their health at home, in the community, or not at all. The panel featuring Foster and Valérie Boulet of the WHO Foundation was titled “Advancing Healthier Futures: The Health Systems We Haven't Built Yet,” and focused on the role of self-care. Pamela Kelley Lauder moderated.
Foster and Valerie Boulet began from the same diagnosis. Boulet cited that an estimated 4.6 billion people who still lack full coverage of essential health services and a projected global shortfall of roughly 10 million health workers by 2030. Health systems cannot hire their way out of numbers like these. Together, the two speakers explained how evidence-based self-care is becoming a structural part of how healthcare is delivered.
Boulet was careful to clarify what self-care means in this context. It goes well beyond eating better and making sure to exercise. It means specific, proven interventions, such as a woman collecting her own HPV sample, a self-test for HIV, or a person monitoring blood pressure or diabetes at home. When making the case to funders, Boulet said, the strain on health systems is the argument that lands. Their hesitation comes over time horizons. Donors want tangible outcomes within a finite window, while what self-care most needs is regulation and health-system strengthening, which is slow and largely invisible. That, she argued, is exactly where philanthropy and the private sector can take on the early risk.
Foster's company has committed to reaching 100 million underserved people by 2030. She described access as far more than a product on a shelf. It also requires information people can use, a price they can pay, and integration into the wider health system. She pointed to maternal health, where multiple micronutrient supplements for pregnant women return, by her account, $37 for every dollar invested. She also pointed to cardiovascular disease, still the leading killer of both men and women and largely silent until it strikes. By the time someone enters the system after an event, she said, it is already too late.
Lauder pressed on the obvious risk. Self-care can extend care to people a clinic will never reach, but it can also quietly shift cost and responsibility onto those least equipped to carry it. Boulet answered that self-care must be embedded as a fully funded part of universal health coverage, a complement to public systems and never an excuse for them to withdraw. For her, equity is the test of whether self-care is working at all. She cited Zambia, which has written interventions such as pregnancy self-tests into its national health package, as an example of design that goes well beyond handing someone an app.
Foster shared additional insights about how AI can help close gaps in healthcare and offered a useful corrective, cautioning against treating it as a silver bullet. She emphasized that AI today is an intelligence layer rather than an intervention. It is valuable when it rests on trusted evidence and helps community health workers reach more people, analyze data faster, and free up clinicians' time.
When asked what would signal meaningful progress in self-care, Foster and Boulet offered similar outlooks from their distinct perspectives. Boulet will look for self-care data appearing in national health dashboards. She drew a parallel to road safety and tobacco control, which succeeded once governments built an enabling environment around individual choices. Foster will look for a transition in emphasis toward well care instead of sick care, with more money behind those efforts. She noted that only two to three percent of health budgets currently go to prevention.
Editorial note: This article was adapted from the SDG Media Zone live programming at UNGA 81, where Pamela Kelley Lauder moderated the high-level panel: “The Health Systems We Haven’t Built Yet,” which was broadcast live at the SDG Media Zone and UN TV.
AI disclosure note: AI [Claude Opus 5.5] assisted in the distillation of transcripts from the event. These were used to outline the article before it was drafted by a human.
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Five Minutes a Year: Why Self-Care is Becoming Health Infrastructure
Stock photo by Getty Images via Unsplash+
October 8, 2026
With billions lacking essential health services and too few health workers to close the gap, a UNGA 81 panel made the case that proven self-care interventions are becoming a structural part of how health systems deliver care, funded as a complement to public systems rather than a substitute.
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alf the world’s population spends less than five minutes a year with a doctor, on average. Daniella Foster of Bayer shared that striking figure during a Diplomatic Courier panel at the SDG Media Zone, noting that’s hardly enough time for introductions. Beyond these brief encounters, most people manage their health at home, in the community, or not at all. The panel featuring Foster and Valérie Boulet of the WHO Foundation was titled “Advancing Healthier Futures: The Health Systems We Haven't Built Yet,” and focused on the role of self-care. Pamela Kelley Lauder moderated.
Foster and Valerie Boulet began from the same diagnosis. Boulet cited that an estimated 4.6 billion people who still lack full coverage of essential health services and a projected global shortfall of roughly 10 million health workers by 2030. Health systems cannot hire their way out of numbers like these. Together, the two speakers explained how evidence-based self-care is becoming a structural part of how healthcare is delivered.
Boulet was careful to clarify what self-care means in this context. It goes well beyond eating better and making sure to exercise. It means specific, proven interventions, such as a woman collecting her own HPV sample, a self-test for HIV, or a person monitoring blood pressure or diabetes at home. When making the case to funders, Boulet said, the strain on health systems is the argument that lands. Their hesitation comes over time horizons. Donors want tangible outcomes within a finite window, while what self-care most needs is regulation and health-system strengthening, which is slow and largely invisible. That, she argued, is exactly where philanthropy and the private sector can take on the early risk.
Foster's company has committed to reaching 100 million underserved people by 2030. She described access as far more than a product on a shelf. It also requires information people can use, a price they can pay, and integration into the wider health system. She pointed to maternal health, where multiple micronutrient supplements for pregnant women return, by her account, $37 for every dollar invested. She also pointed to cardiovascular disease, still the leading killer of both men and women and largely silent until it strikes. By the time someone enters the system after an event, she said, it is already too late.
Lauder pressed on the obvious risk. Self-care can extend care to people a clinic will never reach, but it can also quietly shift cost and responsibility onto those least equipped to carry it. Boulet answered that self-care must be embedded as a fully funded part of universal health coverage, a complement to public systems and never an excuse for them to withdraw. For her, equity is the test of whether self-care is working at all. She cited Zambia, which has written interventions such as pregnancy self-tests into its national health package, as an example of design that goes well beyond handing someone an app.
Foster shared additional insights about how AI can help close gaps in healthcare and offered a useful corrective, cautioning against treating it as a silver bullet. She emphasized that AI today is an intelligence layer rather than an intervention. It is valuable when it rests on trusted evidence and helps community health workers reach more people, analyze data faster, and free up clinicians' time.
When asked what would signal meaningful progress in self-care, Foster and Boulet offered similar outlooks from their distinct perspectives. Boulet will look for self-care data appearing in national health dashboards. She drew a parallel to road safety and tobacco control, which succeeded once governments built an enabling environment around individual choices. Foster will look for a transition in emphasis toward well care instead of sick care, with more money behind those efforts. She noted that only two to three percent of health budgets currently go to prevention.
Editorial note: This article was adapted from the SDG Media Zone live programming at UNGA 81, where Pamela Kelley Lauder moderated the high-level panel: “The Health Systems We Haven’t Built Yet,” which was broadcast live at the SDG Media Zone and UN TV.
AI disclosure note: AI [Claude Opus 5.5] assisted in the distillation of transcripts from the event. These were used to outline the article before it was drafted by a human.
