Health in All Policies: An innovative approach to promote health, equity, and sustainability

Public health professionals have learned that they must seek innovative approaches to meet today’s complex public health challenges. Health in All Policies is a collaborative approach to improving the health of all people by incorporating health considerations into decision-making across sectors and policy areas, and is one approach to meeting today's health challenges. Health in All Policies initiatives are spreading rapidly and dynamically in the United States and around the world and in the last five years cities, counties, and states throughout the United States have been integrating Health in All Policies approaches into their work. There is no “right” way to do this work; while all Health in All Policies initiatives will require that people across different sectors work together as a group, the membership, level of formality, and activities of the group will vary. These initiatives are formal and informal, and have been developed in big and small communities and in rural and urban areas. Common to all Health in All Policies initiatives is that agencies and individuals are brought together from multiple sectors for the purpose of advancing health broadly, rather than to work on one particular policy.

The first presentation of the day includes a brief description of the social determinants of health, an overview of Health in All Policies, and a lecture describing the 5 Key Elements of Health in All Policies and the relationship of equity and climate change to the Health in All Policies approach. The presentation will use a number of local, regional, and state case studies to demonstrate how this approach has been put into action. The presentation will include a lecture describing a number of tools (e.g., Healthy Communities Framework; aspirational goals) to create a vision for collaborative initiatives. This module includes a description of how the California Health in All Policies Task Force came together to develop the Healthy Community Framework, and will introduce the associated healthy community indicators that have been developed for local use. Participants will have an opportunity to engage in the Healthy Community Framework exercise. Finally, the presentation will use small group discussion as a venue to explore how participants can create a vision that holds health, equity, and sustainability as priorities in their collaborative work and how they might use the presented tools in their communities.