Perspectives

Evaluating Sustainable Development Goal Targets: A Physician’s Perspective

Authors: Ramin Parsa-Parsi, MD, MPH

Abstract

For the next 15 years, the global response to poverty, rising inequality, and other challenges to sustainable development will be guided by the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,1 referred to in its preamble as a “plan of action for people, planet and prosperity.” This agenda comprises 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) focused on ending poverty and hunger, achieving gender equality, ensuring healthy lives, and more. Many of these goals and the 169 targets created to support them were devised in direct response to the unfinished commitments of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).2 With this in mind, it is important to look back at some of the successes and failures of the MDGs and their impact on public health to understand the context in which the SDGs emerged.

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References

1. United Nations. Agenda 2030: the Sustainable Development Goals. https://www.unglobalcompact.org/what-is-gc/our-work/sustainable-development/sdgs. Published September 2015. Accessed June 30, 2016.
 
2. United Nations. Millennium Development Goals. http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/bkgd.shtml. Accessed June 30, 2016.
 
3. United Nations. The Millennium Development Goals report 2015. http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/2015_MDG_Report/pdf/MDG%202015%20rev%20(July%201).pdf. Published 2015. Accessed June 30, 2016.
 
4. Monitoring of the achievement of the health-related Millennium Goals, Report by the Secretariat, World Health Organization, Sixty-Ninth World Health Assembly. http://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/WHA69/A69_14-en.pdf. Accessed March 24, 2016.
 
5. United Nations. Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingourworld. Accessed July 25, 2016.