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Making sure that health surveillance data are integrated into public health planning and decision-making is demanding. Politicians and their administration may lack knowledge, interest, or will to take it into account. Politics is at its core solution-driven, and this need for imminent action may outweigh the importance of solid knowledge. This paper focuses on Norwegian municipalities and fleshes out two factors that may provide an enabling environment for educating relevant personnel in health surveillance data; i) the existence of a public health coordinator and ii) the set-up of inter-sectoral working groups. We have anticipated that those organisational resources play an important role in linking the bodies of information provided in the municipalities' health surveillance document ; the municipal health profile ; and the health promotion priorities. The findings confirm the anticipated centrality of organisational resources. Having dedicated and inter-sectoral organizational resources working as boundary spanners – such as public health coordinators – is decisive to meeting the demands of current public health challenges. Moreover, dedication is useless unless there is a critical volume of the coordinator's work. It is only when she/he is in a full position that the profile is fully integrated. The study further identifies other conducive conditions for integration. For example, does knowledge on health determinants resides not only in statistical data, but also in qualitative experiences of people and professional practitioners. Of interest for further research is to explore how to educate such organisations to integrate such experiences into health promotion action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question raised in the article is how user participation and similar terms have been construed in policy for disabled people since the terms were introduced. The empirical base is Norwegian policy documents dealing specifically with policies relating to disabled people from the mid-1960s to the present. The study is based on a critical discourse analytical approach. The dominant discourses are characterised as 'varying discourses of democracy'. The discourses can be seen as illustrating mutual trust between citizens and the state in the Nordic welfare model. However, the harmony between citizens and the state is not necessarily sufficient to elicit great changes in political practices. The Nordic countries' reputation of 'being number one' in deinstitutionalisation and independent living might also conceal problems such as inflexible systems and the imbalance of power, whereby the control of services lies with the system and the professionals, not the users. The article analyses how user participation have been construed in policy documents for disabled people. Norwegian policy documents from the mid-1960s to present is the empirical base. The study is based on critical discourse analysis. The dominant discourses is characterised as varying discourses of democracy. The apparent harmony between the citizens and the state might conceal that the control lies with the system and the professionals, not the users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Framing has previously been studied in the field of pandemic preparedness and global health governance and influenza pandemics have usually been framed in terms of security and evidence-based medicine on a global scale. This paper is based on the pandemic preparedness plans, published after 2009, from eight European countries. We study how pandemic preparedness is framed and how pandemic influenza in general is narrated in the plans. All plans contain references to ‘uncertainty’, ‘pandemic phases’, ‘risk management’, ‘vulnerability’ and ‘surveillance’. These themes were all framed differently in the studied plans. The preparedness plans in the member states diverge in ways that will challenge the ambition of the European Union to make the pandemic preparedness plans interoperable and to co-ordinate the member states during future pandemics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The question we raise in this paper is whether the educational gradient in avoidable mortality differs from overall and non-avoidable mortality among men and women in Norway. By avoidable deaths we refer to deaths caused by diseases that are either treatable if given appropriate medical care, or preventable if available preventive measures were implemented. The data set is derived from official administrative registers and includes all Norwegian men (1 107 427) and women (1 087 842) aged 25-67 years with information about status alive/dead during the period 1994-1999. Adjusted for sociodemographic and socioeconomic factors, education forms a marked and independent gradient in overall and non-avoidable mortality and an even steeper gradient in avoidable mortality - in particular in ischemic heart disease and preventable deaths. The educational gradient is shallower for deaths considered treatable by health care, but is still present. These patterns apply to men and women alike. The findings of our study suggest that health care and health policies may play a role in reducing inequalities in deaths that are 'avoidable, unnecessary and unjust'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses patterns of compliance with COVID-19 regulations in Southwest Norway. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and a series of interviews, we contrast grassroots discourses with the Norwegian government's own emphasis on 'trust' in its risk communication strategies. As opposed to the official claim that Norwegians complied with COVID-19 emergency regulations because they trusted the authorities, the evidence suggests that citizens complied more due to the informal pressure of their peers. Affective reciprocity and moral judgement, including the dynamics of kinship sociability in which they are expressed, here acquire a critical analytical dimension. In dialogue with dominant theories of trust in risk studies, we argue that such relational aspects of everyday life should be taken into consideration as essential factors for any health risk mitigation strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Joint efforts among welfare services are often needed to provide help to people with complex needs. Interprofessional collaboration is believed to play an important part in successful service provisions. In Norway, a strong political will and significant efforts are focused on financing and implementing policies to support interprofessional collaboration. Despite this, empirical literature on the topic is fragmented. An overview of interprofessional collaboration in Norway is internationally relevant since the complexity in social service provision is experienced as challenging in different contexts. A scoping review was performed to investigate the facilitators of and constraints on interprofessional collaboration by Norwegian welfare services. After screening the relevant literature, 12 empirical studies were synthesized and analyzed using four dimensions of interprofessional collaboration (sharing, partnership, interdependence, and power). The results suggest that interprofessional collaboration by Norway's welfare services has not been fully actualized. This is partly due to the individual services' autonomy and segregation, which are reflected in laws and regulations, the funding system, and different ideological goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the attention given to universal design in recent years, many people with impairments still refrain from travelling on public transport. This explorative case study, conducted in the greater Oslo region in Norway, aims to add knowledge on why this is so. Findings indicate that insecurity while travelling and expectations of problems along the way are significant barriers. For many it is the sum of all challenges combined, from experience or anticipation that leads to non-use of public transport. The study shows that universal design policy, as of today, does not lead to accessible public transport systems that rendered impairments irrelevant. If society could safeguard the individuals' travel needs, this might have profound societal repercussions through increased workforce participation and value added in society. Only then can society make the best use of all its inhabitants while championing inclusiveness and equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An international research collaboration answered, “Can equity in perinatal health for migrant women be measured for comparison across countries?” In nine countries, perinatal databases were assessed for the availability of equity indicators. Equity data were also sought from women and health records. Optimal sources of data differed depending on the migrant perinatal health equity indicator. Health and migration data, required to capture equity, were often not reported in the same location. Migration indicators other than country of birth were underreported. Perinatal health equity can be measured for international comparisons, although a standardized protocol is required to capture all indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In contemporary western society, there has been an increasing focus on physical activity as a vehicle for promoting health. How physical activity is promoted and organized varies across countries. This article focuses on the Norwegian system, which is characterized by voluntary sport being organized during leisure time, and all being federated under the Norwegian Olympic Committee and Confederation of Sports (NOC). Guided by the field concept of Bourdieu, historical works and contemporary sport policy documents are analyzed in order to explore how health is considered within the sport context. The conclusion is that health is both facilitated and constrained in the sport field. The voluntary dominance of the sport field makes it sustainable in relation to providing physical activity. However, the voluntary dominance of the sport field also makes it vulnerable and unpredictable in relation to implementing state sport and/or health policy. The state cannot in any way be assured to achieve its health objectives through the sport field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The potential for information technologies (ITs) to contribute to a struggle against social inequalities in health is discussed in contemporary policy and research. Expectations are on IT to facilitate access to health expertise and knowledge, and hence result in improved health practices and outcomes for individuals. In this article, the authors argue that this currently dominant understanding of the relation between IT and social inequalities in health is constraining as well as insufficient to explain the persistence of health inequalities in digitalized western societies. Human action is reduced to be about rational choice, and technology is expected to be a passive tool to be employed by implementers and policy-makers. Drawing on case studies from two telemedicine projects in Norway, this analysis combines perspectives from sociology concerned with structural inequalities on the one hand, with science technology studies on the other. It reveals how the practice and performance of IT is tied to the practice and performance of local differences, and this might be important to a discussion of the social distribution of health. Combining these two perspectives allows for an alternative understanding of how IT and social inequalities in health interact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]