Health Is Everyone's Business - Working Together for Health and Wellbeing

Publications
Health Is Everyone's Business
Working Together for Health and Wellbeing

Date of publication: July 2006

Summary
Publication availability
Publishing information
Background papers

Summary
Health is Everyone’s Business: Working Together for Health and Wellbeing is a report to the Minister of Health from the Public Health Advisory Committee (PHAC) that looks at the implications of a changing context for public health in New Zealand.

The report begins with the premise that New Zealanders’ health and wellbeing requires more than just the provision of health services. This means that good health, the prevention of illness, and dealing well with disability is significantly an outcome of the settings in which people live their lives. Safe neighbourhoods, clean air and water, access to transport, education and employment are some of the factors that determine overall patterns of population health and wellbeing.

Most central and local government agencies whose actions affect the settings in which people live, lie outside the health sector, therefore a collaborative “whole of government” response is required if health is to be improved, illness prevented and disability well addressed.

The PHAC has taken the innovative and collaborative approaches currently applied to emerging epidemics such as diabetes, or potential ones such as avian influenza, as a guide to how health policy could evolve. The report identifies some of the new opportunities for collaborative approaches to improving health and explores the new capacities that public health and other agencies will require if these opportunities are to be realised. The report is intended as an invitation to those inside and outside the health sector to develop fresh approaches to sustaining and improving health and wellbeing.

The report’s overall goal is a new framing of health issues to focus on the importance of prevention and on the development of a “whole of government” approach to improving the health of all New Zealanders. It describes the set of approaches developed by the Committee as “building blocks” for improving overall health and for reducing health inequalities.

The roles of those the PHAC sees as key players in health improvement are described. The report outlines the necessaries for effective collaboration across sectors; examines how to build capacities in public health workforces; examines funding arrangements and how they can facilitate or hinder opportunities for collective action; looks at how effective management of information can facilitate information sharing and inform public health practice; examines who should lead collective action at the various levels; and finally makes recommendations for the Minister to adopt to reduce health disparities between groups of New Zealanders and to improve overall health and wellbeing of all New Zealanders.

Publication availability
This publication is available in PDF format below:

Health Is Everyone's Business (PDF, 427 KB)

This publication is also available in hard copy. You can order a copy by emailing moh@wickliffe.co.nz or calling 04 496 2277 quoting HP number 4243. Please let us know your name, your physical address and how many copies you would like.

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Publishing information
Date of publication: July 2006

ISBN 0-478-28512-4 (Book)
ISBN 0-478-28513-2 (Internet)

HP: 4243

Background papers
Analysis of Submissions to Emerging Issues for Public Health in New Zealand
Emerging Issues for Public Health in New Zealand – a Discussion Paper. October 2004
Public Health in New Zealand – where to from here? Five opinion pieces commissioned by the PHAC