Healthy Together: Analysis of WHO Guidelines and CDC Guidelines in Developing Countries (The Case of COVID-19)

Introduction

“Guidelines advise people on how something could be done or what course of action can be taken in a particular circumstance (National Health and Medical Research Council Act, 1992). The guidelines provide precise instructions on how to provide health care services (Woolf, Grol, Hutchinson, Eccles & Grimshaw 1999, p. 527) and have the potential to improve the care process, especially the results for the patient, although their beneficial effects are related to the success of implementation, being essential the use of a rigorous and transparent process to identify, evaluate, adopt and adapt the guidelines (Graham et al., 2002, p. 608).

According to Graham et at. (2002), “well-developed guidelines have the potential to improve the quality and process of care by our health care professionals and to improve patient health outcomes” (p. 607).

In 2002, WHO announced the importance of a set of approaches (World Health Report, 2002) carried out at the national level that must be implemented to reduce specific risks in ​​health. These approaches included the dissemination of information to the public, especially through the media as it is useful on a large scale of intention to change behaviors (World Health Report, 2002).

A process for implementing the guidelines generally involves a set of entities, the identification of the roles and responsibilities of each, the creation of partnerships, and the implementation at national and local levels, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Implementation process for health action

Source: (WHO, 2019, p. 188)

Situations and their contexts are more easily managed if the health professional or other actors (educators and students in learning) are equipped with these previous guidelines.

The World Health Organization has issued, over the years, guidelines that are easy to understand and memorize, with guidelines for individual and public health, just as the CDC provides and makes available to interested parties a collaborative platform of free access with a set of interventions, processes, materials, guidelines with evidence of results (or the lack of them) that currently allow your immediate digital access to know which interventions, campaigns, and most effective solutions exist, through comparative studies carried out by various specialists.

As an example, we present the scheme for implementing guidelines with one of the cases, associated with the dietary guidelines (Figure 2).

Figure 2.

Process to implement guidelines: The case of Dietary Guidelines 2015-2020 (WHO)

Source: Own elaboration based on WHO, 2015

Method: Qualitative Content Analysis

For content analysis Ryan and Bernard (2003), propose the following reflection for qualitative analysis (Ryan & Bernard, 2003) (Table 1).

Source: (Author, based on Ryan e Bernard, 2003)