Health 2015

Health 2015, the government programme outlining targets in national health policy until 2015 places special emphasis on health promotion. The programme is intended for the health care sector but also other sectors of government. Public health is crucially determined by factors outside health care - lifestyle, environment, quality of products and other factors that are either beneficial or harmful to the health of the community.

The main challenges nowadays relate to disease prevention, mental health problems and the disparities in health, welfare among different population groups.

The state of the nation’s health is matched increasingly with EU and WHO standards. The foundation for the Health 2015 strategy is provided by the Health for All programme of the WHO and the earlier national Health for All 2000 programme.

The Health 2015 programme contains eight goals, including targeting youth smoking.

1. Child wellbeing and health to increase, and symptoms and illness caused by insecurity to decrease appreciably.

2. Smoking by young people to decrease, to less than 15 % among those aged 16-18; health problems associated with alcohol and drug use among the young to be dealt with appropriately and will not exceed the level of the early 90s.

3. Accidental and violent death among young adult males will be cut by a third from the level of the late 1990s.

4. Working and functional capacity among people of working age and working conditions to improve, helping people to cope longer in working life; retirement to be about three years later than in 2000.

5. Average functional capacity among people over 75 to continue to improve as it has for the last 20 years.

6. Finns should expect to remain healthy for an average of two years longer than in 2000.

7. Finns’ satisfaction with health service availability and functioning of health services, and their subjective healthiness and experiences of environmental impacts on personal health that least to remain at the present level.

8. In implementing these targets, another aim will be to reduce inequality and increase the welfare and relative status of those population groups in the weakest position. The objective will then be to reduce differences in mortality between the genders, groups with different educational backgrounds, and different vocational groupings by a fifth.


Sources:

Government Resolution on the Health 2015 public health programme. Ministry of Social Affairs and Health. Publications 2001:6.

Health inequalities in Finland. Trends in socioeconomic health differences 1980-2005  Ministry of Social Affairs and Health. Publications 2007:9

 Updated 3.3.2010.