How does the Swedish public health policy address wider determinants of health and work to eliminate health inequities?
The Swedish public health policy aims to create the social conditions to ensure good health for everyone. The policy is an outcome of an extended two-decade process of awareness-raising within the health system and among policy-makers and civil servants in other sectors. The process resulted in a shared understanding that health is not produced by the health system alone. It is produced, rather, by others sectors and, thus, is the responsibility of all sectors. For instance, the housing sector is to accountable for its role in securing healthy homes, and the transportation sector is accountable for ensuring a low level of deaths on the road as well as pedestrian safety, especially in places where there are young children. The 11 target areas of the Swedish Public Health Policy, which were designed by an inter-sectoral committee, reflect this understanding. The targets reflect an agreement, at the highest political levels, of the importance of an inter-sectoral approach to health. But t
