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Improving urban population health requires integrated spatial planning to create liveable communities, with affordable housing and daily living destinations accessible via walking, cycling and/or public transport. Integration must occur horizontally across transport, housing, employment, education and social infrastructure sectors, and vertically between levels of government. While horizontal integrated planning is a common urban policy aspiration, there is a lack of clarity on how it can be attained. Using a case study of Melbourne, Australia, this paper draws on interviews with state government policymakers and policy content analysis, to explore barriers and enablers of horizontal integrated planning for health. Key requirements for integrated planning are outlined, to assist policymakers in creating healthy, liveable communities.

Background The importance of evaluating policy processes to achieve health equity is well recognised but such evaluation encounters methodological, theoretical and political challenges. This paper describes how a program theorybased evaluation framework can be developed and tested, using the example of an evaluation of the South Australian Health in All Policies (HiAP) initiative. Methods A framework of the theorised components and relationships of the HiAP initiative was produced to guide evaluation. The framework was the product of a collaborative, iterative process underpinned by a policy-research partnership and drew on social and political science theory and relevant policy literature. Results The process engaged key stakeholders to capture both HiAP specific and broader bureaucratic knowledge and was informed by a number of social and political science theories. The framework provides a basis for exploring the interactions between framework components and how they shape policy-making and public policy. It also enables an assessment of HiAP’s success in integrating health and equity considerations in policies, thereby laying a foundation for predicting the impacts of resulting policies. Conclusion The use of a program theory-based evaluation framework developed through a consultative process and informed by social and political science theory has accommodated the complexity of public policy-making. The framework allows for examination of HiAP processes and impacts, and for the tracking of contribution towards distal outcomes through the explicit articulation of the underpinning program theory.

Objectives: The aim of this paper is to present the Child Safety Reference Frameworks (CSRF), a policy advice tool that places evidence-based child safety interventions, applicable at the sub-national level, into a framework resembling the Haddon Matrix. Method: The CSRF is based on work done in previous EU funded projects, which we have adapted to the field of child safety. The CSRF were populated following a literature review.Results: Four CSRF were developed for four domains of child safety: road, water and home safety, and intentional injury prevention.Conclusion: The CSRF can be used as a reference, assessment and comparative tool by child safety practitioners and policy makers working at the sub-national level.

As taxation is one of the key public policy domains influencing population health, and as there is a legal, strategic, and programmatic basis for health impact assessment (HIA) in Finland, we analyzed all 235 government bills on tax legislation over the years 2007–2014 to see whether the health impacts of the tax bills had been assessed. We found that health impacts had been assessed for 13 bills, bills dealing with tobacco, alcohol, confectionery, and energy legislation and that four of these impact assessments included impacts on health inequalities between social classes. Based on our theoretical classification, the health impacts of 40 other tax bills should have been evaluated.

This latest contribution by the evaluation research team at Flinders University/Southgate Institute on their multiyear study of South Australia's Health in All Policies (HiAP) initiative is simultaneously frustrating, exemplary, and partial. It is frustrating because it does not yet reveal the extent to which the initiative achieved its stated outcomes; that awaits further papers. It is exemplary in describing an evaluation research design in which the research team has excelled over the years, and in adding to it an element of theory testing and re-testing. It is partial, in that the political and economic context considered important in examining both process and outcome of the HiAP initiative stops at the Australian state's borders as if the macro-level national and global political economy (and its power relations) have little or no bearing on the sustainability of the policy learning that the initiative may have engendered. To ask that of an otherwise elegant study design that effectively engages policy actors in its implementation may be demanding too much; but it may now be time that more critical political economy theories join with those that elaborate well the more routine praxis of public policy-making.

Introduction: Health is multidimensional and affected by a wide range of factors, many of which are outside the health sector. To improve population health and reduce health inequality, it is important that we take into account the complex interactions among social, environmental, behavioural, and biological factors and design our health interventions accordingly.Objectives: This study examines mortality differentials in children of different age groups by key social determinants of health (SDH) including parental education and employment, mother’s level of autonomy, age, asset index, living arrangements (utilities), and other geographical contextual factors (area of residence, road conditions).Design: We used data from the two rounds of Bangladesh Health and Demographic Survey, a nationally representative sample survey of the population residing in Bangladesh. Multilevel logistic models were used to study the impact of SDH on child mortality.Results: The study found that the mother’s age, the education of both parents, the mother’s autonomy to take decisions about matters linked to the health of her child, the household socio-economic conditions, the geographical region of residence, and the condition of the roads were significantly associated with higher risks of neonatal, infant, and under-five mortality in Bangladesh.Conclusion: The study findings suggest there are complex relationships among different SDH. Thus larger intersectoral actions will be needed to reduce disparities in child health and mortality and achieve meaningful progress towards equity-oriented universal health coverage.Keywords: social determinants of health; inequality; inequity; universal health coverage; neonatal mortality; infant mortality; under-five mortality; health inequality; intersectoral action; Bangladesh(Published: 12 February 2016)Citation: Glob Health Action 2016, 9: 29741 - http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/gha.v9.29741Special issue: This paper is part of the Special Issue: Monitoring health determinants with an equity focus. More papers from this issue can be found at www.globalhealthaction.net