The Finnish Presidency's main health event, Health in All Policies expert conference, will take place on 20-21 September 2006. In view of this conference, the Finnish Ministry of Social Affairs and Health has published a book entitled Health in All Policies - Prospects and Potentials. The book was produced as a part of an partly EU funded project Europe for health and wealth and aims to advance understanding of the ways to promote health through policies in sectors other than health. The publication presents a number of examples of 'Health in All Policies', where advances in health have already been acquired through policies in sectors such as education, the environment, water and sanitation, planning, labour, housing, traffic, agriculture and nutrition.
The book describes sectoral experiences on health in all policies on, for example, heart health or health at workplace. One part is also dedicated to opportunities and challenges of health governance, another on health impact assessment. "Effective and systematic action for the improvement of population health, using genuinely all available measures in all policy fields, is an opening for a new phase of public health," writes the Health Minister Liisa Hyssälä in the foreword.
The conclusions recognise, however, that even if in many policies, the combined strategy of other policies with health will be a 'mutual gains' or a 'win-win' strategy, in some cases the values and objectives of the various policy intentions can be incompatible, "if not directly in conflict". One example of such a conflict is the aims of the EU Common Agricultural Policy's objectives on future alcohol production and consumption and the health policy objectives. In such cases aims and objectives need to, according to the publication, "be negotiated and compromises will need to be sought".
