Economic, social and environmental policies, programs and projects have impact on health. Health in All Policies (HiAP) aims to improve population health by taking into account these impacts. In order to be successful, apart from political will and resources, HiAP needs appropriate tools for assessing impacts on population health. When making choices between policy options, decision-makers rely on predictions from Health Impact Assessment. However, currently there is no gold standard for establishing and assessing validity of predictions. This paper distinguishes between two levels of causal pathways regarding health impacts – specific and conditional, and proposes that the Average Health Status – Health Inequalities Matrix which always identifies the true condition about impacts on population health from different policy options and meets all forms of validity could be a gold standard. The Matrix solves problems with evidence and facilitates making the right choices at any level and local context, thus is useful for researchers, policy-makers and practitioners for designing, analysing and evaluating all kinds of policies. By allowing swift, reliable and inexpensive appraisal of different policy options the matrix makes feasible taking into account the impacts on population health and paves the way for institutionalizing of HiAP.
Key words: Population Health, Impact Assessment, Health in All Policies, Scenarios for Policy Options, Validity of Predictions, Evidence
Open Access http://www.igi-global.com/article/role-average-health-status-health/140241
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