Here you will find methods, tools and guidelines to assist the development of long-term perspectives for strategic investment in health and health promotion.
The philosophy behind the Healthy Regions project is that health should be seen as an investment and that good health, together with education, is one of the underlying building blocks for regions to create economic growth.
The methods, tools and guidelines that you can download from this website, have been developed in order to facilitate dialogue through better understanding of practice-level processes. It is our conviction that sustainable results are only achieved through structured processes that enable different actors to be heard and to have influence on the development of strategies and concrete activities.
By clicking on the triangle on the right hand side of this ‘landing page’ you can access material categorized in terms of themes. Further down the site you can click on the “toolbox” section, where the material is categorized to demonstrate a range of regional strategic processes. Also further down the site are six flags, representing the participating countries from the Healthy Regions project - by clicking on the flags, you find translated material and you can read about how the tools, methods and recommendations have been used in each country.
We wish you good reading and if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. You find the contact details of the team behind the website in the right corner, under the ”process and people” section, where you also find contact details on the people who participated from each of the 6 countries.

The Healthy Regions Concept sets out three key themes that underpin the idea of health as an investment:

• investing in citizens’ good health saves public money, as it is cheaper to prevent than to cure;
• healthy citizens are a precondition for innovation and growth; and
• judicious and strategic investments in health as a business sector can lead to innovation and new areas for regional development and knowledge, creating employment and economic growth.

The Healthy Regions Concept is visualized through the Healthy Regions Triangle that you will find on the right side of the website, and when you click on the different parts of the triangle, relevant methods, tools and recommendations will appear. It demonstrates how a “Healthy Region” works in a holistic way through:

1. Health as a business sector
   This area focuses on the regional development potential for the health sector to be treated and recognised as a substantial business development sector in its own right, with product and services growth, new employment and enterprise - e.g. hospitals, medico, e-health, “Healthy Tourism” etc.
    
2. Health Competencies
   This area focuses on the institutional health competencies, i.e. how does the region co-operate with local communities, how do the region and local communities work strategically with health promotion, and how effectively do they plan, execute and evaluate health promotion activities.
    
3. Healthy Settings
   This area focuses on the activities close to the citizens and the infrastructures that are used to implement concrete health promotion activities. Is there a close link between the regional health strategy and the concrete health promotion and disease prevention activities implemented in settings close to the citizens and a well-developed understanding and implementation of social marketing techniques?

Please click on the triangle on the right side for further information and explanation.

to make region a “Healthy Region” the address the goals of the Lisbon Strategy.
The tool box gives examples on how you can gather information about your region’s key competencies within health, on how you can manage a regional dialogue between regional health stakeholders in order to get an understanding of the health oriented dilemmas and challenges within your region, and also on how you can work with health as business sector, where your region can create new employment and economic growth.
As the Healthy Regions Project has been an action-research project, highly process oriented and pragmatic in its approach, all the tools were tested within the participating regions, in order to gain practical experience (see specific section of the website). For this reason, whereas the tools and methodologies within the “Healthy Regions Triangle” are organized in relation to themes, here they are organized in relation to the process within the toolbox. Access toolbox

Among the resources that you can access are how;

• The Belgian partners have used the Healthy Regions project to create an overview of relevant health actors in the Brussels Region, and how that has proved the importance of a structured co-ordination and dialogue.
• The Danish partners used the Healthy Regions approach and project to create a dialogue about health as a political priority area through the presentation of future scenarios and dilemmas.
• The partners from Sleswig Holstein have managed to use the Healthy Regions project to bring health on the political agenda and how health has become an important part of the new overall strategy for the “Active Region Mittelholstein”.
• The partners from the Region of Veneto have used to Healthy Regions project to raise awareness of the importance of a closer dialogue between policy areas and the development of a common strategy.
• The Swedish partners have used the Healthy Regions project to focus on health, culture and nature as an economic growth factor. A political process has also been started to create a public health policy, including all public organizations and all municipalities.
• The partners from South West UK have used the Healthy Regions project to kick-start a broad regional dialogue about linking health and wellbeing issues with sustainable regional development. The UK partners have developed focus on health and community-based learning and new regional health-oriented initiatives have been created.

By clicking on the flags, you will enter into sections with material written in the respective languages and material, which has been adapted to the specific context of the region. The 6 regions that are represented are; Brussels, South Denmark, Sleswig-Holstein, Veneto, Öster Gotland & Örebro and South West UK.