Universal Healthcare Coverage (UHC) is a global initiative striving to ensure that all people, everywhere, can access quality health services they need without financial hardship. The core tenets of UHC rests on principles of equity, non-discrimination and the right to health,aiming to reach and cover even the most marginalised populations, ensuring that no one is left behind. The recent High Level Meeting (HLM) on Universal Health Coverage (UHC), witnessed a renewed commitment from the global community to achieving UHC for all, marked by the adoption of the United Nations Political Declaration on Universal Health Coverage.

It is disheartening that Self-Care did not find a place or feature in this year’s UHC HLM commitments. However, this is not the end of the road for advocating for the self-care agenda and its feature in the political declaration in the future. We must acknowledge that we have collectively made huge strides towards actualising self care interventions. Although selfcare did not make it to the political declarations draft, there are key declarations that we can leverage to advocate and champion self care interventions. These commitments include:

• Leaving no one behind and critical barriers

  
  



• Strengthening health systems

  
  



• SRHR and access to information

  
  



• Digital Health Interventions

  
  



• Monitoring and Evaluation & Governance

  
  

In this podcast, we will highlight how young people and advocates can strategically leverage these commitments to bring selfcare conversations to the forefront and hold decision makers, leaders and policy makers accountable. With targeted advocacy and collective efforts amongst youth-led networks, activist, advancing the self-care agenda, we are hopeful that selfcare will see its way into the political declaration in the next 2027 UHC HLM. After all, selfcare seeks to ensure that individuals take control of their own health and this is a positive contribution to actualising UHC.