Participation as a driver of health equity

Abstract

Social participation is about population involvement in decisions that affect their health. The promotion of this social innovation as a general rule of governance in all policies would be a key driver of health equity. In general, responsibility for organization of participatory processes falls to the public administration, but participatory processes can also be initiatives of companies, social entities or nongovernmental organizations, enabling numerous entry points and opportunities to promote more participatory social processes even in contexts in which there is no participatory tradition. Specifically, the health community can promote a greater level of social participation through the whole policy process, from diagnosis to evaluation, from health provider-level to health system-level, and when working on intersectoral strategies, programmes and activities. This paper ends with a proposal for evaluation purposes that identifies six basic components to be measured: (i) inclusion; (ii) deliberation; (iii) information flow; (iv) decision-making; (v) institutional political will; and (vi) community capacity.