Health information and advocacy for "Health in All Policies": a research agenda.

Placing health in the agendas of all policy makers remains a challenge. Finding new ways to boost Health in All Policies should be a continuous process. Currently, health information initiatives gather core health statistics, indicators related to healthcare, along with individual level risk factors such as smoking or obesity. However, there is a lack of identifiable information showing the effect of non-primary health policies on population health. A research agenda is proposed, focusing on three related areas that would frame health information in such a way that the implications for decision-makers from non-health sectors are clear: (a) research in order to provide solid and quantitative evidence linking the social and environmental determinants of health with their ultimate health outcomes; (b) research that shows and quantifies the effect of policies and specific interventions on these determinants; and (c) the development of policy-linked indicators which provide a quantitative estimate of the health that would be gained (or disease burden that could be avoided) by adoption of a specific policy.