Opportunities to reduce health inequalities by ‘Health in All Policies’ in the Netherlands: An explorative study on the national level

Local government officials׳ views on intersectoral collaboration within their organization – A qualitative exploration

“…Although quite an extensive range of the literature has explored determinants of ISC [e.g., [5,[11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20], fewer studies [e.g., [6,[21][22][23][24][25] have documented how ISC is perceived (qualitatively) by officials from different policy sectors (i.e., expertise fields) within local government. Because this type of ISC is critical for making local integrated public health policies [4], the present study aims to answer the following research question: What are the views of public officials on the determinants of intersectoral collaboration (ISC) within local governments during the preparation phase of implementing ISC within their organization?…”

The relevance of work-related learning for vulnerable groups. Dutch case study of a Health Impact Assessment with equity focus

“…In order to substantially reduce these inequalities a joint effort of the health and non-health sectors is required (e.g. social affairs and education) [10]. Therefore, it is important to incorporate the issue of health equity in the policies of different sectors and to establish an intersectoral collaboration or Health in All Policies [11].…”

Measuring stages of health in all policies on a local level: The applicability of a maturity model

“…That is, only joint efforts of multiple sectors and actors could effectively influence the determinants that underlie health inequalities, such as low income, unemployment, low level of education, unfavourable working conditions, and an unhealthy life style [5,6]. However, establishing HiAP has been found to be exceptionally complex [3,[7][8][9]. It has, for example, been found difficult to engage other sectors, to link problems and solutions for several sectors, and to take care of a sustainable approach [10].…”

“…Management support is essential for commitment on an organizational level [17]. On a political level, commitment for a HiAP strategy includes whole-of-government elements such as having a broad vision on health, stimulating sectors outside the public health domain to improve population health, supported by a visible and approachable unit, using Health Impact Assessment (HIA), and evaluating the results and effects of HiAP [7,8].…”

“…Like in other maturity models [29] every maturity stage requires the use of different management strategies, such as steering on awareness, persons, processes, results, and continuous improvement [23]. Based on national and international studies we identified necessary conditions (critical factors) for establishing HiAP and applied these to the various stages [7,8,17,18,30]. As shown in Table 3, a distinction is made between individual factors (uniform language, existence of good relations, positive experiences), organization factors (shared interest, visible health implications of the sector, sufficient resources, adequate timing), and political factors (high sense of urgency, sufficient support, and input municipal councillor).…”