Health promotion international
-
New trade agreements affect how governments can regulate for health both within health systems and in addressing health protection, promotion and social determinants of health in other policies. It is essential that those responsible for health understand the impacts of these trade negotiations and agreements on policy space for health at a national and local level. While we know more about implications from negotiations concerning intellectual property rights and trade in goods, this paper provides a screening checklist for less-discussed areas of domestic regulation, services, investment and government procurement. As implications are likely to differ on the basis of the organization and structures of national health systems and policy priorities, the emphasis is on finding out key provisions as well as on how exemptions and exclusions can be used to ensure policy space for health.
-
Health in All Policies (HiAP) approach is generally perceived as an intersectoral approach to national or sub-national public policy development, such that health outcomes are given full consideration by non-health sectors. Globalization, however, has created numerous 'inherently global health issues' with cross-border causes and consequences, requiring new forms of global governance for health. Although such governance often includes both state and non-state (private, civil society) actors in agenda setting and influence, different actors have differing degrees of power and authority and, ultimately, it is states that ratify intergovernmental covenants or normative declarations that directly or indirectly affect health. ⋯ A new term has been coined to describe how health is coming to be positioned in governments' foreign policies: global health diplomacy. To become adept at this nuanced diplomatic practice requires familiarity with the different policy frames by which health might be inserted into the foreign policy deliberations, and thence intergovernmental/global governance negotiations. This article discusses six such frames (security, trade, development, global public goods, human rights, ethical/moral reasoning) that have been analytically useful in assessing the potential for greater and more health-promoting foreign policy coherence: a 'Health in All (Foreign) Policies' approach.