1. Health and Wellbeing Programme Director
Whole of Government MOVEment Healthy Ireland – Let’s MOVE! Future Health Summit 27 May 2016
Kate O’Flaherty
Health and Wellbeing Programme Director
Department of Health

2. Whole of Government MOVEment: What is it? And why do it?
Whole of Government or Whole System approaches a.k.a Joined-up Working
Government Departments (and other partners) work together on critical societal issues or ‘wicked’ problems that one sector alone cannot address
Healthy Ireland as example – improving health and wellbeing outcomes through tackling social and environmental determinants (not just health factors)

3. Whole of Government MOVEment: How do we it? What does it take?
Structures? Helpful but not sufficient alone … whole of government MOVEment about ‘way of working’ … therefore needs:
Mandate
Leadership
Supportive culture … for collaborative working

4. Whole of Government MOVEment: All About Collaboration

5. Whole of Government MOVEment: All About Collaboration
Communication and relationships
Shared vision on goals and outcomes
Trust
Focussed on solutions
Flexibility and openness
Understanding different perspectives
Skillset … networking …
need to be a (boundary) spanner

6. Whole of Government MOVEment: The challenges
Working … horizontally in a vertical system
Balancing …. short-term pressures v long-term goals
Changing …. culture, behaviour, ways of working
Avoiding … (health) ‘imperialism’ / language important
Linking … policy and implementation (and top-down with bottom-up)

7. Whole of Government MOVEment: Healthy Ireland
Joint projects underway with range of Departments including …
D/ Education and Skills (Wellbeing in schools)
D/ Children and Youth Affairs (Giving children best start in life – focus on prevention and early intervention)
D/Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation (Healthy Workplaces)
D/ ..Local Government (Healthy Cities & Counties)

8. Whole of Government MOVEment: Now is good
Climate of public sector reform
Wider recognition of need for greater integration to achieve broader societal aims
Increasing emphasis on ‘prevention and early intervention’ and ‘health and wellbeing’
Citizens expect it (and want to be part of it)

9. Whole of Government MOVEment: Some final thoughts
Our challenges are not unique to Ireland … however unique opportunity to develop solutions
Same principles apply for ‘cross-sectoral’ working
Biggest job = joining the dots
Priority focus = building (and maintaining) relationships … and keeping things moving

10. Thanks for listening @HealthyIreland healthyireland@health.gov.ie
@HealthyIreland