The Thinking Healthcare System; Chapter 7 - Public health policy for social action to ensure better population health

The ‘Health in All Policies’ approach and commitment toward sustainable development goals (SDGs) emphasize the role of social determinants of health to improve and maintain the health of individuals and the population. The recent World Social Report cautions that growing inequality in the world can jeopardize the progress of internationally committed development goals such as SDGs. Health is a social good. Often, most health outcomes result from situations prevailing in sectors other than health. The health system acts as the shock absorber for other sectors' involvement. Hence now the time has come to realize the role of other partners and make entry points to have a strong collaboration with nonhealth sectors like education, transport, engineering, social welfare, food, information technology, and other sectors. The decision-makers involved in the health sector should try to collaborate successfully with other sectors. There could be several approaches to make such collaboration depending on the available resources, need, and expertise. In this chapter, we have discussed how the decisions taken in other sectors in the form of social actions or public policy impact population health and how the health system has successfully collaborated with other sectors through several case studies from the world and Indian context.