Measures for promoting wellbeing, health and safety proposed

The most important measures for promoting wellbeing, health and safety in 2023–2027 include developing cooperation between the wellbeing services counties, municipalities and organisations and making better use of information, according to the Advisory Board for Public Health.

The Advisory Board raised the key issues that need to be given particular attention during the next government term, said the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health in a press release on Friday.

Shared responsibility of municipalities, wellbeing services counties and organisations requires clarification and strengthening of their roles, the Advisory Board proposed.

The work done by the municipalities to promote wellbeing, health and safety must be strengthened by identifying the differences between them. Large cities face different challenges than small municipalities. This is why we need different types of solutions to secure the wellbeing of residents.

Now that the wellbeing services counties have begun operating, it is necessary to monitor how cooperation in promoting wellbeing, health and safety is carried out and what practices and procedures are introduced in respect of services and activities at the interface level. By forming an up-to-date situation picture, it is possible to take the necessary corrective action and to target the development work.

Ensuring a favourable operating environment for organisations is a common cause. This also requires that information describing organisational activities will be brought into decision-making by the municipalities and wellbeing services counties. With increasingly scarce resources, it is wise to focus on strengthening the effectiveness of these activities. The ways of achieving this are information and the use of information in management and guidance.

“We still need information on the whole population to support the promotion of wellbeing, health and safety. We also need the information collected by service organisers on how the measures for promoting wellbeing, health and safety are implemented in the wellbeing services counties and municipalities and how the cooperation works,” the Advisory Board observed.

In addition, it is necessary to make even better use of information in decision-making. In practice, this means that multisectoral information will be used in setting and monitoring objectives and assessing them on a long-term basis.

Promoting the population’s wellbeing and health calls for cooperation between administrative branches and multi-actor cooperation between different sectors of society. One example of a set of measures advanced through cross-administrative cooperation is the government resolution on the promotion of wellbeing, health and safety 2030.

The Advisory Board for Public Health stresses that it is important to secure the structures that ensure a joint discussion and the setting and implementation of objectives in the future, too. It is necessary to agree during this spring and summer what this means in practice. The term of the Advisory Board for Public Health ends on 31 July 2023.