Healthy public policy (original) (raw)
Related papers
Healthy public in all policies
SUMMARY The introduction of the notion of 'Healthy Public Policy' in the Ottawa Charter is considered a relevant response to the emerging social-political context of the 1970s and 1980s. It also remains an important, yet volatile, argument for the consideration of policy impact on health. In our analysis, however, those that continued to argue for Healthy Public Policies and those who should develop them have remained naı¨ve about the profound political dimensions of this exercise. Applying insights from the political sciences, we argue that greater levels of connectedness and commitment across civil society, and governance integration between sectors and levels of politicking and action are required for the further success of health integrated policies. The role of communities and the key communicative drivers of the Ottawa Charter (enable, mediate and advocate) need to be strengthened in more astute strategies.
Healthy public policy in Canada: a survey of ontario health professionals
International quarterly of community health education, 1988
"Healthy public policy" has become a catchphrase of the "new" health promotion. The concept, however, remains vague and lacking in practice. A survey of Ontario public health workers was conducted in June 1988, using the World Health Organization's Second Health Promotion Conference Declaration on Healthy Public Policy as a source of policy statements and action areas. Results are constrained by a low response rate (22.5%, N = 180), but indicate a high degree of support for healthy public policy concepts by senior level public health workers. Social environment policy issues (notably child poverty and unaffordable housing) are highest ranked priority issues, although physical environment (pollution) ranked most important when respondents were asked to choose a single issue. Lifestyle health issues are relatively low-ranked, although they remain priorities for action by respondents and their employers. The Canadian and Ontario Public Health Associations are thought to have the best analyses of healthy public policies, but are not seen as prominent policy actors. Government and media are considered weakest in their analysis of healthy public policy. Respondents' comments indicate a willingness to strengthen their role, and that of their health associations, in advocacy for healthy public policies.
Health in All Policies--all talk and little action?
Canadian journal of public health = Revue canadienne de santé publique
For three decades, Canadian and international researchers have been suggesting that improving population and public health requires attention to a range of determinants and factors and that concerted and coordinated action on the part of non-health ministries and organizations might be necessary to achieve this goal. Suggestions have been made for collaboration and integration by explicitly designing intersectoral actions and interventions and assessing the impact of all policies and programs for their effects on health. While some progress has been made on these goals, it is minor compared to the size of the problem. This article addresses one type of intersectoral action, Health in All Policies (HiAP), and asks questions about why it has not gained a place in governments across Canada. Possible barriers are suggested, such as current structural and political factors that prevent long-range, shared strategies to improve health. Suggestions are made for generating economic and evalu...
Health Public Policies: Complementarities and
2016
The use of mixed methods (combining quantitative and qualitative data) is developing in a variety of forms, especially in the health field. Our own research has adopted this perspective from the outset. We have sought all along to innovate in various ways and especially to develop an equal partnership, in the sense of not allowing any single approach to dominate. After briefly describing mixed methods, in this article we explain and illustrate how we have exploited both qualitative and quantitative methods to answer our research questions, ending with a reflective analysis of our experiment.
The establishment of policy is key to the implementation of actions for health. We review the nature of policy and the definition and directions of health policy. In doing so, we explicitly cast a health political science gaze on setting parameters for researching policy change for health. A brief overview of core theories of the policy process for health promotion is presented, and illustrated with empirical evidence.
It is well-established that population health is influenced by a multitude of factors, many of which lie outside the scope of the health sector. In the public health literature it is often assumed that intersectoral engagement with non-health sectors will be instrumental in addressing these social determinants of health. Due to the expected desirable outcomes in population health, several countries have introduced Health in All Policies (HiAP). However, whether this systematic, top-down approach to whole-of-government action (which HiAP entails) is efficient in changing government policies remains unclear. A systematic evaluation of HiAP is therefore much needed. Lawless and colleagues present an evaluation framework for HiAP in their article: " Developing a Framework for a Program Theory-Based Approach to Evaluating Policy Processes and Outcomes: Health in All Policies in South Australia. " This work is an important endeavor in addressing this problem (of uncertainty as to whether HiAP is effective) and represents an essential contribution to the HiAP literature. Nonetheless, in the spirit of encouraging ongoing reflection on this topic, we wish to highlight some challenges in the presented framework, which may pose difficulties in operationalization. We find that the evaluation framework faces two main limitations: its unclear causal logic and its level of complexity. We argue that in order to function as a tool for evaluation, the framework should be explicit about the mechanisms of change and enable us to trace whether the assumed causal relations resulted in changes in practice. Developing manageable evaluation frameworks, albeit simplified, may then be an important part of cumulating the theoretical insights aspired in theory-based evaluation. On this basis, we highlight how HiAP processes and healthy public policies respectively involve different mechanisms, and thus argue that different program theories are needed.