2015 APHA Annual Meeting & Expo

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Recorded Annual Meeting Presentations (RAMP) are now available for purchase.
Only $90 for presenters, $140 for registered attendees and $200 for non-attendees.

Online Program

337355
All for health? Historical perspectives on WHO's initiatives to promote Intersectoral Approaches to Health


Tuesday, November 3, 2015 : 10:35 a.m. - 10:55 a.m.

Anne-Emanuelle Birn, MA, ScD, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
Long before the present-day attention to “health in all policies” and “joined-up” and “whole-of-government” approaches as a means of addressing health inequities, the health of the public and the public health field were understood to engage with and draw from multiple fields and sectors rooted in the larger social and political context. At the global level, a particularly salient precursor to “health in all policies” emerged at the World Health Organization (WHO) in the 1980s: the intersectoral action for health program (IAH) was a direct response to the WHO’s 1978 Declaration of Alma-Ata’s call for social justice as the underpinning of health. This talk traces the unfolding of IAH at WHO, highlights its intellectual, institutional, and activist champions, examines its research and programmatic dimensions and constraints, and reflects upon the political and ideological pressures that ultimately circumscribed its reach.

Learning Areas:

Public health or related public policy
Social and behavioral sciences

Learning Objectives:
discuss the history of a key precursor of “health in all policies” -- the World Health Organization’s intersectoral action for health program in the 1980s and 1990s; and identify the factors that enabled and constrained the intersectoral approach in the past and reflect upon current efforts to promote “health in all policies.”

Keyword(s): International Health, Politics

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I carry out research on the history of international health and I have prior experience as a presenter.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

Back to: 4172.0: Critical work on health equity in all policies – history, data, pedagogy, and action