National Prevention and Health Promotion Strategy and California Health in All Policies Task Force: Creating healthier communities through cross-sectoral collaboration

Collaboration with non-health agency partners expands the ability of public health agencies to achieve their goals of healthy people in healthy communities. Non-health agencies provide leadership and bring unique missions and assets that can accelerate simultaneous progress toward healthier communities and achievement of each partner agency's own mission. Two parallel federal and state processes involving interagency collaboration for health are underway: the National Prevention and Health Promotion Strategy, and the California Health in All Policies (HiAP) Task Force. The national effort is chaired by the Surgeon General and involves seventeen federal agencies and departments, while California's work involves nineteen state agencies and departments. The National Prevention Strategy aims to achieve improvements in health and quality of life for individuals, families, and communities to reduce the incidence and burden of the leading causes of death and disability; the HiAP Task Force aims to identify and implement policies, programs, and strategies to improve the health of Californians while achieving State sustainability goals. Each process has benefited from an advisory group and stakeholder engagement in developing recommendations that address healthy physical, social, and economic environments, healthy eating, active and injury-free living, and prevention. While each process has unique foci, the similar approaches utilized offer a single model of interagency collaboration for health. We explore the opportunities and challenges faced when developing effective collaboration while negotiating competing priorities. The model presented and lessons learned are useful for other federal, state or local agencies aiming to establish cross-sector collaborations to address health at multiple levels.