Primary health care (PHC) has values – around treating people close to home, continuity and coordination. It stands as the principal interface between the health system and communities – the locus where the formalized system meshes with people’s lives. More than that, primary health care can shape and reshape health systems to make them more accessible, more integrated and more sustainable.

Despite the lessons of the pandemic, the efficiency PHC offers, and the potential it has to achieve Sustainable Development Goals, it continues to grapple with insufficient resources. This Primer or policy textbook was produced by the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies with the WHO Special Programme on Primary Health Care. Dozens of experts have come together to support policy-makers in addressing the challenges. It consolidates the global evidence on implementation and is a guide on the “how” of PHC, combining, as it does, best practices, and the tacit knowledge that countries have generated, with more formal research and analysis.

The Primer is organized in three parts:

• Part I explains the PHC approach, its history, core concepts and rationale, and draws out lessons for transformation.
• Part II addresses operational and strategic levers that make PHC work. It covers governance, financing and human resources for health, medicines, health technology, infrastructure and digital health, and their role in implementing change.
• Part III concludes with a cross-cutting view of the impacts of PHC on the health system, efficiency, quality of care, equity, access, financial protection and health systems resilience, including in the face of climate change. 

This volume will serve as a tool that will help policy-makers to make the case for investing in primary care, deliver change in practice and move towards universal health coverage and Health for All.