Identifying co-benefits and building relationships to benefit multiple partners

Health in All Policies is built upon the idea of “co-benefits” and “win-wins.” Health in All Polices work should benefit multiple partners, simultaneously addressing the goals of public health agencies and other agencies to benefit more than one end (achieve co-benefits) and create efficiencies across agencies (find win-wins). This concept is essential for securing support from partners and can reduce redundancies and ensure more effective use of scarce government resources. Finding a balance between multiple goals will sometimes be difficult, and requires negotiation, patience, and learning about and valuing others’ priorities.

Trust, mutuality, and reciprocity are foundational elements to developing such relationships. In addition, describing the benefits partners can expect to reap from working together is a critical process for successfully engaging new cross-sectoral partners.  The presenter with describe how mutuality, reciprocity, and trust can be cultivated, and share examples from California’s Health in All Policies Task Force on how relationships have been built and co-benefits have been used to build buy-in and support. Following a short description of these concepts, participants will have the opportunity to participate in a role-play and discussion. This role-play will highlight the different goals and missions of various sectors and how public health can communicate and partner more effectively with those partners to identify shared opportunities for action.