Working together for healthy public policy

In their empowerment model of Health Promotion, Green et al. (2015) identify the importance of healthy public policy as a vehicle to promote health in working to decrease health disparities. They suggest that healthy public policy is ‘concerned with the government and the public sector in creating the conditions that support health’ (p263, 2015). If all public policy had this over-arching component, of seeking ways to improve health within the development of the policy, we could go a long way towards reducing ill health and health inequalities. Perhaps we can work together to lobby our leaders to consider the healthy option in all of their policy initiatives and advocate for change? This will obviously depend on how the state, government or policy making processes are structured in your own area but this could be undertaken in three ways. Firstly, as individuals there are important things we can do. We may be able to lobby our employer about policies that they are introducing and suggest ways, that by making small changes, a positive impact could be made on health. We can undertake individual lobbying which may include writing to our: