The Healthy Settings Approach

At their simplest, settings such as schools and workplaces are convenient places for health interventions. However, acknowledging that “health is created and lived by people within the settings of their everyday life; where they learn, work, play and love” (WHO: Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion, 1986), the healthy settings approach recognises that many risk factors are interrelated and can be best tackled through comprehensive, integrated programmes in the contexts and places where people live their lives. Drawing on organisational development and community development perspectives, the approach is ecological and systems-based, working towards whole system change – with the aim of integrating health and well-being within the ethos, culture, routine life and core business of settings.

Action is usually focused in three areas:

• creating a healthy working, living and learning environments
• integrating health into the core business and routine life of the setting
• contributing to the health and well-being of the wider community.

The approach is values-based, uses a range of methods and incorporates six key elements:

• Generating High Visibility Innovative Action: through high profile projects exploring the interconnections between different stakeholder groups and their environments and behaviours.
• Leading Organisational and Cultural Change: by embedding the principles and aims of the healthy settings approach into the organisational ethos, culture and policy and planning processes.
• Securing Senior Level Commitment and Corporate Responsibility: through the leadership and advocacy of senior decision-makers for health, well-being and sustainable development.
• Enabling Wide-Ranging Participation: by encouraging and facilitating the active involvement of stakeholders in identifying and prioritising needs and planning and delivering action.
• Anticipating and Responding to Public Health Challenges: by ensuring the setting addresses key challenges pertaining to its population.
• Helping to Deliver the Institutional Agenda: by mapping public health challenges against the setting’s core business agenda and demonstrating clearly its role in helping to deliver this.

Whole system approach