The Power of Policy to Promote Health and Well-Being

Abstract

Governing for health involves designing, crafting, drafting, and implementing policies that will result in healthy, equitable, and sustainable societies in which well-being is enhanced. These policies need to be present in every sector. They need to both direct government actions toward well-being and provide a regulatory framework for the private sector. This chapter examines the role of values and ideologies in policy, including the extent to which agency or structure determines health, describes policy processes, and finally outlines the important meta-policy messages required for good governance for health and well-being. It presents the Mandela of health and discusses the Raworth doughnut model of economics as a useful tool to understand the values that should underline healthy public policy.