The Sustainable Development Goals
The Sustainable Development Goals are the United Nations' seventeen goals for the fifteen years to 2030, and they succeed the Millennium Development Goals. A few of them bear directly on medical writing, and organisations as well as countries now commit to them. Goal 4 concerns quality education and the paths by which people learn. Whether the goals will be met by 2030 is judged with more and less hope.
What the goals are
The eight Millennium Development Goals ran from 2000 to 2015. In the 2020 view of one energy-economics researcher, they were first-world goals for the third world, meant to help it eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, improve maternal health and reduce child mortality; many had almost been achieved, and there was far less poverty on the planet than before. The Sustainable Development Goals followed them for a second fifteen-year period ending in 2030. All 193 UN member states adopted them in 2015 in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The 17 goals have a second layer of 169 targets beneath them. They range across economic, ecological, social and welfare concerns. They call on all UN member states, low-, middle- and high-income, to promote prosperity while protecting the environment, and they are part "of a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet". Their aim is to end poverty and achieve equality while protecting the environment, and they go hand in hand with strategies to improve health and education, reduce inequality and spur economic growth.
Which goals bear on medical writing
In the researcher's view, medical writing probably overlaps most with goal 3, good health and well-being, and EMWA, as an organisation, overlaps with goal 4, quality education, through the further education of professionals, though almost all of the goals are touched on.
In the view of two guest editors of EMWA's journal in 2022, the 17 goals are relevant to medical writers personally and professionally. In particular, three goals resonate strongly with the daily activities of medical writers and communicators, in their view: goal 3, to promote "health and well-being for all at all ages"; goal 4, to "ensure inclusive quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunity for all"; and goal 12, on "sustainable production and consumption patterns".
The goals as an organisation's commitment
By 2020, not only countries but individual organisations, especially companies, pursued the goals and benchmarked themselves against them. In the researcher's view, every person, private or legal, should consider all of its activities in the context of the goals, or has already started to.
In March 2022, EMWA was in the process of registering as a UN Sustainability Partner Organisation, and its sustainability special interest group had found that the association fits well with three of the 17 goals, including goal 4.
What quality education means under goal 4
The objective of goal 4 is "to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all".
The word "quality" is often associated with positive attributes, but, depending on how one looks at it, the quality of something can be good or bad. Different industries use tools that remove subjectivity and formally measure the quality of what they do, so as to meet industry standards and regulations and ensure good quality. One is statistical process control, which can help during an ongoing analysis of education needs to ensure good quality. Codes of conduct, such as the Teaching Council of Ireland's code of professional conduct for teachers, and frameworks that support education quality systems, such as the "three pillars of quality education", are also useful tools. The three pillars are:
- Quality teaching, which needs the development and recruitment of high-calibre teachers. Teachers need continuous professional development so that they stay current in how and what they teach, and, to keep good teachers, respect as people and professionals. They must receive good salaries, and their living and working conditions must allow them to do their best.
- Quality tools for inclusive teaching and learning, where all students are entitled to learning experiences that respect diversity, enable participation, remove barriers and consider a spectrum of learning needs, together with appropriate curricula and learning materials and resources.
- Quality environments for teaching and learning, which should be supportive, comfortable, safe and secure and have appropriate facilities that encourage learning and effective teaching. They allow everyone to get involved, can be found at home and in the community, and must be stable, with freedom from hunger so that students can focus on their studies.
Involving people is very important, with everyone, including parents, students, teachers, school authorities and support staff, working together to educate the community. Quality education is not "one size fits all": what works in one geographical region might not work in another, and every region has different cultures and infrastructures to consider. Some UN statistics on goal 4 recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic did not favour the ability of some communities to support the goal.
The paths of learning
Goal 4 relates to primary, secondary and third-level education, and education provides a bridge between these levels. In developed countries, primary and secondary education are prerequisites for tertiary education, and success in third-level education leads to graduation. Whether every region needs this model is, in one medical writer's view, for each region to discuss.
It is essential to think about how appropriate a way of learning is to a particular situation, and ways to learn other than university are important. The paths of learning include:
- primary, secondary and third-level education systems
- apprenticeships
- online learning and massive open online courses
- continuous professional development
- on-the-job training, or learning while doing
What medical writers do for goal 4
In the medical writer's view, writing is important to education. People learn and share knowledge by doing something and writing about it, and so educate others. Organisations such as EMWA provide an opportunity to engage in continuous professional development. She finds that EMWA members already do some things that support goal 4, perhaps without realising, and that they look to the association's executive committee to learn what medical writers can do to support it. Improved quality of education, in her account, is important to improved quality of life.
Whether the goals will be met
In the researcher's own opinion, some goals are fairly ambitious, not all of them can be achieved, and some are contradictory, in that one can only be advanced at another's expense. Even so, he holds that defining, agreeing and pursuing them is a massive cultural achievement of humanity, perhaps comparable to the universal declaration of human rights. Asked in October 2020 whether the world was on track to meet all 17 goals by 2030, he answered yes and no: some will be achieved, or at least are going in the right direction, and others will certainly not be reached. He invokes the saying that the direction is more important than the speed, and holds that thinking can already start about what the goals for the fifteen years after 2030 should be.
In 2024, writers from a nonprofit organisation held that most people have no idea what the goals are and probably could not name one, because the goals are not frequently or well communicated to the public, and that this has likely played a role in the slow progress towards them. On 22 November 2023, the UN's goals webpage listed 3,862 events hosted, 1,327 publications published and 7,780 actions taken since the goals were adopted in 2015, yet according to a Nature article it looks as though none of the goals and just 12% of the 169 targets will have been met by the 2030 deadline. In September 2023, world leaders gathered in New York City to develop a rescue plan that involved better international cooperation and coordination across topics and disciplines. At the UN Economic and Social Council's 2023 youth forum, held ahead of that September's goals summit, it became clear, in the writers' account, that young people, though the majority of the world's population, are often excluded from decision-making. That exclusion leaves decision-makers out of touch with the realities of most people, which can be detrimental to creating a sustainable future. The writers hold that it is important for young people to take an active role in shaping the future they desire. At the 2023 summit it became evident that young people are the driving force for change, which served as a wake-up call to global leaders to engage in an inclusive conversation and commit to achieving the goals together.