Investment for health: a discussion of the role of economic and social determinants

2002

This is a collection of papers from an interdisciplinary workshop on “the promotion of wellbeing: options and obstacles”, held at Anacapri, Italy, on 25 September 2000. The workshop focused on priority options for and obstacles to the promotion of population health through public policies and their links to the private and nongovernmental sectors. Three of the four papers presented at the workshop are given here. They identify factors and forces that should be taken into account in formulating a contemporary strategy for improving population health in Europe. They focus on the social and economic determinants of population health and provide some new insights on how to invest for health. The papers focus on key considerations and stimulate thinking about deficits in knowledge, current shortcomings in health development approaches, potential obstacles to making positive changes and ways to overcome them.