Health in All Policies: A Key Driver for Health and Wellbeing in a Post-COVID-19 Pandemic World
Policy in all sectors affects health, through multiple pathways and determinants. This paper by the WHO Collaborating Centre on ‘Investment in Health and Well-Being’, Public Health Wales, describes the rationale for, and principles underpinning Health in all policies (HiAP) mechanisms, including Health Impact Assessment (HIA), experiences, challenges and opportunities for the future.
HiAP is an approach that seeks to identify and influence the health and equity impacts of policy decisions, to enhance health benefits and avoid harm. This usually involves the use of HIA or health lens analysis. There is growing international experience in these approaches, and some countries have cross-sectoral governance structures that prioritise the assessment of the policies that are most likely to affect health.
The fundamental elements of HiAP are intersectoral collaboration, policy influence, and holistic consideration of the range of health determinants affected by a policy area or proposal. HiAP requires public health professionals to invest time to build partnerships and engage meaningfully with the sectors affecting the social determinants of health and health equity.
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