The World Health Organization guideline for non-surgical management of chronic primary low back pain in adults: implications for equitable care and strengthening health systems globally
Global health research and policy · 2025 · DACH
Source and licence
- Authors
- Andrew M Briggs, Yuka Sumi, Anshu Banerjee
- Title
- The World Health Organization guideline for non-surgical management of chronic primary low back pain in adults: implications for equitable care and strengthening health systems globally
- Journal
- Global Health Research and Policy, 2025
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Changes
- Verbatim excerpts; formatting adapted
Full text retrieved 2026-10-27 from Europe PMC · PMC12232859
Licence statement of the original publication
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
This page reproduces excerpts of the original publication; the original is authoritative. It has not been reviewed by a physician, does not state a recommendation of Medelix and does not replace medical advice. The guideline may have been updated since.
Open the original publication →Full text on Europe PMC
Recommendations
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Abstract
The World Health Organization (WHO) released its first guideline on non-surgical management of chronic primary low back pain (LBP) in adults in 2023. The Guideline signals a timely and important global response to the current and projected burden attributable to LBP, particularly amongst populations made vulnerable, e.g. older people and people in low- and middle-income countries. The Guideline offers recommendations on which interventions for chronic primary LBP should be offered in most contexts, and those interventions that should not be offered as part of routine care. As a WHO technical product, the Guideline can function as a catalyst to commence reorientation of health systems and service delivery towards holistic, integrated, person-centred and high-value LBP care. However, to achieve this vision and Universal Health Coverage that is inclusive of LBP care, transformations are required at point of care (micro-level), within service models and organisations (meso-level) and across health system Building Blocks (macro-level). In this paper, we consider implications of the Guideline for health services and health systems globally. We highlight opportunities and priorities to build capacity across the Building Blocks of health systems and how current global health agendas, such as the WHO 14th General Program of Work, UN Decade of Healthy Ageing 2021–2030, and Rehabilitation 2030 can support implementation of the Guideline’s recommendations. Global collaborative and multi-sectoral efforts, supported by countries, health workers, professional/academic societies, health financing agencies, civil society organisations, private sectors, and people with lived experience will be needed to sustainably implement the Guideline’s recommendations into health systems globally.
Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s41256-025-00426-w.
Contents of the original publication
The section headings of the original.
- Introduction
- Low back pain matters to people and health systems
- WHO Guideline recommendations and their implications for care (micro-level) and health services (meso-level)
- Building and sustaining a global public health response to chronic primary LBP: implications for health systems (macro-level).
- Building block 1: leadership and governance
- Building block 2: service delivery
- Building block 3: health system financing
- Building block 4: health workforce
- Building block 5: medical products, vaccines and health technologies
- Building block 6: health information systems
- Implications
- Glossary of terms
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