Health is a Collective Responsibility

Health is created in interaction between individuals, families and the local and extended networks and communities in which individuals participate. Close, everyday relationships influence our attitudes, perspectives on life and behaviour, including in relation to health.

Health is also created by people’s living conditions and by the framework for people’s lives, such as housing conditions, the working environment, the external environment, food safety and the health services available.

The best way to develop and disseminate efforts to improve public health is by recognizing our responsibility and taking action based on this. Individuals are responsible for their own lives. Everyone has the right to live their lives as they wish: to make their own choices. But people’s choices affect them and may influence other people positively or negatively. Individuals have responsibility for themselves, for their family and friends and for participating in communities.

Communities are everyday contexts in which people participate such as schools, sports clubs, neighbourhoods and workplaces.

People have responsibility for one another in such communities. In communities people help to create each others’ lives. Communities – local social and extended networks – contribute to forming and changing our norms. This also applies to both positive and negative changes in health behaviour in a broad sense, including lifestyles, environmental behaviour and behaviour related to road traffic. Local social networks, such as the parents of the schoolchildren in one class, neighbours and co-workers, greatly influence how people act. Communities can support individuals and individual families, but they can also isolate and distance themselves from individuals, such as in bullying at school or mobbing at work.