Health 2020 – Achieving Health and Development in Today's Europe
| Author | Richard Alderslade,Zsuzsanna Jakab |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12166 |
| Published date | 01 May 2015 |
| Date | 01 May 2015 |
Health 2020 –Achieving Health and
Development in Today’s Europe
Zsuzsanna Jakab
WHO Regional Office for Europe
Richard Alderslade
Durham University
The background and origins of Health 2020
The 53 countries of the European Region of the World
Health Organization (WHO) stretch from Iceland in the
west to the Pacific coast of the Russian Federation in the
east. The countries are richly diverse, including some of
the wealthiest countries in the world, as well as some of
the poorest. In the west there are the western European
countries that were early members of the European
Union (EU). Further east are the countries that emerged
from communist rule at the end of the 1980s that have
mostly joined the EU subsequently, together with those
countries that were themselves constituent republics
within the Soviet Union itself. This last group contain a
variety of countries with different resource and industrial
bases, some rich, some much less so.
There has been a long history of health for all policies
within WHO and certainly within the European Region,
with a common commitment across countries to univer-
sality, solidarity, and equal access as the guiding values
for organizing and financing their health systems. These
have included Health for All by the year 2000 (1979),
Health 21(1999) and the Tallinn Charter: Health Systems
for Health and Wealth (1998). Health 2020 builds on
these polices in a determined attempt to further advance
health for all principles and improve health and wellbe-
ing among the 900 million or so people who live across
the European Region in the early 21st century.
The policy framework was agreed unanimously by the
WHO Regional Committee for Europe in 2012 after an
extensive and diverse process of preparation occupying
around two years. Yet if Health 2020 is to achieve real
impact in terms of improving the health of those 900
million people, it must actually be implemented and
make a difference. This implementation challenge across
53 countries of diverse backgrounds and cultures is the
present operational priority for the WHO Regional Office
for Europe , and the countries themselves.
This article describes the ambitions at the start of the
development of Health 2020, and the ways in which its
authors hoped to involve a wide set of actors across the
region in both the process itself and also the content.
Building on and extending this involvement will be cru-
cial to implementation, and the ultimate impact and suc-
cess of the policy framework.
1. Its development process
The development of Health 2020 was conducted along-
side another major development, namely drafting and
consulting on a European action plan (EAP) for the
strengthening of public health capacities and services.
This document focuses on improving public health ser-
vices and infrastructures, including the public health
aspects of health care services. The EAP proposes a set
of ten horizontal essential public health operations
(EPHOs) to become the unifying and guiding basis for
European health authorities to monitor, evaluate and set
up policies, strategies and actions for reforms and
improvement in public health. Health 2020 and the EAP
share an integrated, consistent, and mutually supportive
perspective.
While the preparatory process for both initiatives was
focused inside the WHO Regional Office for Europe, every
attempt was made to create a process that was inclusive
of all those interests and actors across the Region con-
cerned with health policy. In particular both Health 2020
and the EAP seek a step-change in priority and invest-
ment to be given to social determinants of health, and
to health promotion and disease prevention.
Health improvement in today’s world must reflect the
wide and complex range of determinants and influences
on health, and the multi-sectoral and multifaceted nature
of policy responses and interventions. The phrases ‘whole
of government’and ‘whole of society’policy develop-
ment reflect this reality, and these concepts are at the
©2015 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Global Policy (2015) 6:2 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12166
Global Policy Volume 6 . Issue 2 . May 2015
166
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