Promoting health through good governance

This approach is based on the rationale that health is determined by multiple factors outside the direct control of the health sector (e.g. education, income, and individual living conditions) and that decisions made in other sectors can affect the health of individuals and shape patterns of disease distribution and mortality.

Health gains, as well as healthy equity and the realization of health as a fundamental human right, require that policy making in other sectors routinely consider health outcomes, including benefits, harms, and health related-costs.

Critically, action across sectors for health and health equity is not just about achieving better health outcomes through securing ‘favours’ from other sectors. Rather, it is about the health sector supporting and collaborating with other sectors to develop and implement policies, programmes and projects in their own remit, in a way that optimizes co-benefits for all sectors involved. 

The broad and interlinked Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) make this more possible and indeed more necessary than ever before, while presenting unique challenges.