Health in All Policies (HiAP) is a collaborative approach that integrates health considerations into policymaking across sectors to improve the health status of communities. The HiAP appreciate a system’s approach in addressing the broader environmental factors that negatively affect health while calling upon multisectoral action. A HiAP concept is a useful approach for addressing the social determinants of health and well-being and in attaining the human rights, Universal Health Access (UHC) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The
The process of institutionalizing HiAP policy in Tanzania has taken long. This can be due to insufficient inputs from the stakeholders. In this context, the Prime Minister’s Office and the Ministry of Health in Tanzania with support from the World Health Organization (WHO) organized another stakeholders’ meeting which aimed at receiving next-level inputs on the draft HiAP and the guidance models.
Stakeholders’ recommendations regarding HiAP policy in Tanzania are categorized into three themes: Collaborative process: there is a need to engage the communities in the process of implementing the HiAP model, the roles of each sector in the implementation of the HiAP model needs to be well stipulated to facilitate smooth monitoring of milestones; Coordination: The implementation process/model needs to be included in the HiAP policy document. This will make it easy for the readers to understand the process of implementing the HiAP model without taking trouble to read the guidance model separately, The HiAP policy document also should include the coordination procedures and decision-making processes and clarify who will coordinate the process, a clear elaboration of how the implementation of the agreed actions by each sector will be achieved is important; Monitoring and Evaluation: A specific monitoring and evaluation (M&E) plan need to be integrated into the HiAP policy document in order to show timelines for the evaluation of the extent to which the various sectors are implementing the model, the challenges experienced, the best practices as well the lessons drawn from the implementation, each sector should provide information on the percentage to which it has contributed to addressing the health problems. It is important to establish a dashboard for synchronizing and accessing such information
Highlights show that stakeholders have important inputs that would help enhance the institutionalization of the HiAP model in Tanzania if put into consideration.