Workshop: National approaches to Public health; policy, strategies, legislation and implementation in Europe
Authors:   Organised by: Federal Centre for Health Education, Robert Koch Institute, Future Forum Public Health, Germany Chair persons: Yvette Shajanian Zarneh - Germany, Svenja Matusall - Germany
Published: November 2019

Background

During the past decades, the growth of knowledge to prevent disease on the one hand and the growth of public acceptance to prevent disease on the other hand led to form public health systems. Soon after, health was no longer considered as an individual responsibility only, and more effective interventions against health threats and communicable diseases were developed. As a result, public agencies and authorities were established to implement newly discovered interventions against health threats and to prevent non-communicable diseases.

Though, the orientation of public health agencies and authorities shifted from prevention of disease to promotion of health in almost all countries, their public health systems are developed widely differently. While some countries look back to traditionally established public health systems, others are pursuing different approaches to achieve Health in All Policies through policy and legislation in Wales or are now evaluating their public health policies after a ten-years-strategy, like Sweden and still others have only recently (2015) introduced a new Preventive Health Care Act and follow a bottom up approach called “Future Forum Public Health”, like Germany.

Objectives

This workshop aims at presenting the very different perspectives on the achievement of public health and different systems around Europe. Both, the disparity of the approaches and their different forms, and different stages of their development will be addressed by each presentation. Despite differences of the public health systems in each context, the workshop will focus on identifying shared features and common challenges of the countries with the goal of identifying inspiring examples and discussing criteria of transferability. During the discussion that will follow, different possibilities of cooperation and exchange will be assessed and debated.

In particular, the workshop will encompass a presentation from Wales on “the future generation’s act” and will include information on the requirements to turn the legislation into practice. The Swedish input will focus on the Swedish national public health policy and its achievements after ten years. France will give an overview of the structural developments during the last ten years. The presentation from Germany will consist of contrasting a top-down and a bottom-up approach, namely the act to strengthen health promotion and prevention in Germany on the one hand and the future forum public health on the other hand. And last but not least, we will hear about the particular success of the Slovenian example with a newly shaped and largely developed public health system.

Key messages

Acquiring insight into different approaches to achieve improvements in public health based on alternative systems is important to identify inspiring examples, shared features and common challenges. Identification of criteria of transferability of public health strategies, legislation and policies between countries, and requirements for implementation are crucial for learning from best practice.