Have you ever heard of the term “intersectoral action for heatlh” ? It refers to the collaboration between two or more sectors of the public life (like education and health care), in order to achieve targets that are relevant to everyone involved. Such collaborations are of utmost importance, as achieving health requires resources and services that mostly lie outside the health sector.
The International Journal of Public Health launced a call for papers on intersectoral action a while ago. We are now happy to announce that three of the submitted papers for this call made it our newly published special issue, called “Intersectoral action to address the social determinants of health”.
The call’s Editor, Louise Potvin, describes in her Editorial for the issue briefly describes the idea of intersectoral action, as well as the current stand of research on the issue. Her editorial is an excellent introduction to the following three papers:
a) “Intersectoral action for health at a municipal level in Cuba” by Jerry Spiegel and colleagues (Open Access article, available for free as a html here and as a pdf here),
b) “Lessons from a Canadian province: examining collaborations between the mental health and justice sectors” by Carolyn Dewa and colleagues and
c) “A scoping review of intersectoral action for health equity involving governments” by Shankardass and colleagues
We would love to hear your opinion on these newly published papers, as well as on the issues of intersectoral action for health. What do you think needs to be done and how should it be studied?
