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This Project has received funding from the European Commission
The European network of health promotion agencies Bundeszentrale für gesundheitliche Aufklärung National Institute of Public Health, NIPH Finnish Centre for Health Promotion (FCHP) The Institute of Public Health in Ireland National Social Marketing Centre International Union for Health Promotion and Education European Partners

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You are here: > National Level Policies > Finland > Policies, strategies and other documents > Documents

Key Documents

Driven by the Health Sector

This section provides the key documents on health inequalities published on a national level in Finland in the  past decade.

Health for All by the Year 2000, The Finnish national Strategy, Ministry of Social Affairs and health, 1986. (no electronic version in English available). This document targets the attainment of not only best possible level of health in the population but also its even distribution.

Government Resolution on the Health 2015 public health programme. Helsinki 2001.
(Publications of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, 2001)

“Health 2015 is a cooperation programme that provides a broad framework for health promotion in various component areas of society. It reaches across different sectors of administration, since public health is largely determined by factors outside health care: lifestyles, living environment, quality of products, factors promoting and factors endangering community health. The concepts ‘settings of everyday life’ and ‘course of life’ play a key role in the programme. The strategy presents eight targets for public health, which focus on important problems requiring concerted action by various bodies. They indicate the outcome aimed at in different phases of life. In addition, there are 36 statements concerning the lines of action underlined by the Government, incorporating challenges and guidelines related to citizens’ everyday environments and various actors in society.

The programme has been prepared by the Advisory Board for Public Health set up by the Government. The process involved consultation with specialists, analyses, seminars and group work.” (from the preface of the document)

The document includes an inequality reduction related target: "(...) the objective will then be to reduce mortality differences between the genders, groups with different educational backgrounds, and different vocational groups by a fifth (by the year 2015). In addition there are two action lines on health care address inequalities in health.

Review of national Finnish health promotion policies and recommendations for the future. (WHO, 2003)
This review was prepared by WHO at the invitation of Ministry of Social Affairs and Health of Finland. It reviews the overall Finnish health promotion system - its past performance and future potential - in the light of the rapidly changing policy context of Finland within the wider world.

One mechanism to raise awareness on health inequalities, is through information dissemination. The Ministry of Health and Social Affairs has published a book entitled Health Inequalities in Finland: Trends in socioeconomic health differences 1980-2005 (2007). It is based on the work of researchers within the TEROKA project.

Other Publications  

[Here you can find reference(s) to book(s) and other major research publications on Health Inequalities in Finland]

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