Vision, Aims and Mission
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The Campaign's Vision
The Global Campaign envisions a future world in which headache disorders are recognized everywhere as real, disabling and deserving of medical care.
In this future world, all who need headache care have access to it without artificial barriers.
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The Global Campaign is a response to these global failures.
Its vision is of a future world in which headache disorders are recognized everywhere as real, disabling and deserving of medical care. In this future world, all who need headache care have access to it, without artificial barriers.
Three principal objectives
The first objective is to know the size and nature of the headache problem in all regions of the world ("knowledge for action"). In 2004, when the Global Campaign commenced its activities, very little was known of the prevalence or burden of any headache disorder for more than half the people of the world: those living in most of the Western Pacific including China, all of South East Asia including India, all of Eastern Europe including Russia, most of Eastern Mediterranean and most of Africa.
The first objective is being achieved in two steps: bringing together all of the published worldwide evidence of the burden attributable to headache, and setting up new studies where the available evidence is lacking or of poor quality.
The Campaign will use this knowledge, as it is gathered, to achieve its second objective.
This is to persuade governments and other health-service policy-makers, health-care providers, people directly affected by headache and the general population that, on clear evidence, headache must have higher health-care priority ("awareness for action").
The third objective, and the ultimate purpose of the Global Campaign, is to plan and implement health-care services for headache, working with local policy-makers and principal stakeholders to ensure these are appropriate to local systems, resources and needs ("action for beneficial change").
Lifting The Burden believes that the basis of the health-care solution for headache in most parts of the world is education. Within these services, better diagnosis and better care will be fostered through education.
Lifting The Burden also believes that most headache management belongs in primary care, where education must be supplemented by clinical management supports to promote expertise and optimize the quality of care. These include diagnostic aids; region-based management guidelines; information sheets for patients, to aid understanding and promote compliance with treatment; and measures of treatment outcome.
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Mission Statement
The mission of the Global Campaign is to reduce the burden of headache worldwide, achieving this by working with local policy-makers and principal stakeholders to plan and implement health-care services for headache, ensuring these are appropriate to local systems, resources and needs.
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