Between knowing and doing: the role of political salience in the adoption of health in all policies in the Netherlands and beyond

Abstract

Context: Scholars have long shown that policies outside health care—such as labor market, housing, and social assistance policies—affect health. Health in All Policies (HiAP) is a collaborative policy approach that integrates health into these sectors. Most research on HiAP adoption focuses on a few well-known cases, highlighting the importance of policy learning and political dynamics. This article updates this knowledge by analyzing the Netherlands alongside Finland and England to ask: How can we understand HiAP adoption in the Netherlands?

Methods: The authors studied the Dutch case using primary and secondary sources and compared it to Finland and England as shadow cases based on existing analyses in secondary sources.

Findings: Policy learning is necessary but not sufficient for HiAP adoption. In the Netherlands, adoption was not partisan, yet it was still political. The key factor driving HiAP adoption in the Netherlands was the political salience of health inequality. This factor played this decisive role in the shadow cases as well, albeit less visibly. Conclusions: The Dutch case shows that HiAP can be a product of coalitional strategies outside legislative politics and can respond to those coalitions’ formulations of problems. Policy learning and political salience are both important, but it is their interaction that best explains whether HiAP is adopted.