World Bank lending for health, nutrition, and population (HNP) activities is accelerating. The Bank's emphasis has evolved from expanding HNP service delivery capacity to encouraging systemic reform. The Bank is now the major source of external finance for the sector in the developing world. The policy influence of its nonlending services is potentially significant.With the current generation of projects, the Bank and its partners are attempting to address underlying constraints to sector performance, while remaining cognizant of the difficulty of improving health sector effectiveness and efficiency, even in developed countries. This volume recommends that the Bank seek to: • do better, not more, in the HNP sector, • improve project monitoring and evaluation, and • strengthen its ties with the World Health Organization and other interested organizations.

Lists citations to the National Health Planning Information Center's collection of health planning literature, government reports, and studies from May 1975 to January 1980.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on both mental and physical health with documented and ongoing effects on the health status of populations globally. One of the key drivers of these trends is the increase in risk factors and unhealthy behaviors in the population (eg. obesity, smoking, alcohol consumption) and poor adherence to health screening, vaccination, or other preventative interventions. This has increased the importance of actions toward disease prevention with a focus on health behavior change. It is recognized that such intervention approaches should be grounded in the principles of person-centered approaches and include patient empowerment, and compassionated care provision, with the aim to facilitate the complex interactions between mental and physical health and effective communication between healthcare professionals and patients. Sharing international learning and best practices for promoting health behavior change using empowerment-oriented approaches is key to supporting the rapid scale-up of effective intervention strategies and will inform research and policy. This Research Topic will focus on best and promising practices of empowerment-oriented strategies for supporting health behavior change. This collection of multidisciplinary articles (original research, reviews, systematic reviews, and opinions) will examine methodologies that address individuals, populations, as well as healthcare professionals that aim to reduce the risk of disease, promote healthy behaviors or enhance adherence to healthcare interventions.