Governance for public health across the health and allied sectors: a report to guide country-level institutional capacity for essential public health functions underpinning multisectoral approaches

Overview

The diverse public health challenges require multisectoral, integrated action, supported by robust and well-coordinated governance that involves actors within and beyond the health sector. Framed around Essential Public Health Functions, the report serves as a reference for national and global public health actors, providing guidance to define and strengthen public health governance to ensure effective delivery of public health functions and services.

Specific objectives are to collate the current understanding of public health governance and develop an operational definition; identify and describe the core components, enablers and guiding principles required to improve public health governance across health and other sectors responsible for various aspects of population health; promote the roles of existing institutional set-up (including ministries of health, national public health institutes or their equivalent with heads of government) in benchmarking and building public health governance, considering the dispersed nature of public health stakeholders in countries.

The report is intended for national and subnational actors—within and beyond the health sector—who are involved in public health governance and in coordinating and delivering public health functions and services. This includes governments, ministries of health, public health institutes, research and professional bodies, allied ministries with key responsibilities for public health, such as finance, planning, local administration, environment, education, agriculture, and commerce, and subnational authorities.