Crossing Bridges -Developing methodologies and building capacity to advance the implementation of Health in All Policies and achieve health equity

 

Prolepsis is an associate partner in a new European project titled “Crossing Bridges -Developing methodologies and building capacity to advance the implementation of Health in All Policies and achieve health equity”.

The program was officially launched on the 1st of January 2011 and will last for 18 months. It is implemented within the framework of the Health Program 2008-2013 of DG SANCO. The project coordinator is “Eurohealthnet” which is based in Brussels. There are 14 other associate partners involved in the project. 

The general objective of this project is to improve European citizen’s health and alleviate health inequalities through the active cooperation of different policy sectors, other than health on a national, regional and local level. 

Improving societal health and well being, and reducing levels of health inequity cannot be achieved by the health system alone. All policy sectors that affect health, for example the employment, financial and environmental sectors, must actively contribute to improving health or consider and optimize their health impacts. Creating synergies between different sectors requires skills and specific knowledge thus it is necessary to adopt specific methodologies that will facilitate cooperation. Crossing Bridges is of particular importance as it will develop and test methodologies which will enable cooperation between sectors and build capacity between different policy makers as a means of improving quality of life and health among citizens. 

More specifically Crossing Bridges will:

-    Analyze existing practice
-    Develop methodologies to implement HiAP, based on the analysis of evidence and good practice in the three focus areas, using the Delphi method
-    Assess capacity building needs
-    Develop the capacity of partners to take a leadership role in health, by organisational development, staff training, resources and partnership development as well as supporting local and regional level authorities.