Policy is often thought as of as decisions taken by those with responsibility for a given policy area - it may be in health or the environment, in education or in trade. The people who make policies are reffered to as policy makers.
Policy may be made at many levels - in central or local government, in a multinational company or local business, in a school or hospital. They are also sometimes reffered to as policy elites - a specific group of decision makers who have high positions in an organization, and often privileged access to other top members of the same, and other, organizations. For example, policy elites in government may include the members of the Prime Minister`s Cabinet, all of whom would be able to contact and meet the top executives of a multinational company or of an international agency, such as the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Policies are made in the private and the public sector. In the private sector, multinational conglomerates may establish policies for all their companies around the world, but allow local companies to decide their own policies on conditions of service. For example, corporations such as Anglo - American and Heineken introduced anti-retroviral therapy for their HIV-positive employees in Africa in the early 2000s before many governments did so. However, private sector corporations have to ensure that their policies are made within the confines of public law, made by governments.
Public policy refers to government policy. For example, Thomas Dye (2001) says that public policy is whatever governments choose to do or not to do. He argues that failure to decide or act on a particular issue also constitutes policy. For example, successive US governments have chosen not to introduce universal health care, but to rely on the market plus programmes for the very poor and those over 65 years, to meet people`s health care needs.
When looking for examples of public policy, you should look for statement or formal positions issued by a government, or a government department. These may be couched in terms that suggest the accomplishment of a particular purpose or goal (the introduction of needle exchange programmes to reduce harm among drug takers) or to resolve a problem (charges on cars to reduce traffic congestion in urban areas).
Policies may refer to a government`s health or economic policy, where policy is used as a field or activity, or to a specific proposal - `from next year, it will be university policy to ensure students are represented on all governing bodies`. Sometimes policy is called a programme: the government`s school health programme may include a number of different policies : precluding children from starting school before they are fully immunized against the major vaccine-preventable childhood diseases, providing medical inspections, subsidized school meals and compulsory health education in the school curriculum. The programme is thus the embodiment of policy for school children. In this example, it is clear that policies may not arise from a single decision but could consist of bundles of decisions that lead to a broad course of action over time. And these decisions or actions may or may not be intended, defined or even recognized as policy.
As you can see, there are many ways of defining policy. Thomas Dye`s simple definition of public policy being what governments do, or do not do, contrasts with the more formal assumptions that all policy is made to achieve a particular goal or purpose.
Health Policy may cover public and private policies about health. It includes policy made in the public sector (by government) as well as policies in the private sector. But because health in influenced by many determinants outside the health system, health policy analysts are also interested in the actions and intended actions of organizations external to the health system which have an impact on health (for examples, the food, tobacco or pharmaceutical industries).
Health Policy may cover public and private policies about health. It includes policy made in the public sector (by government) as well as policies in the private sector. But because health in influenced by many determinants outside the health system, health policy analysts are also interested in the actions and intended actions of organizations external to the health system which have an impact on health (for examples, the food, tobacco or pharmaceutical industries).
Just as there are various definitions of what policy is, so there are many ideas about the analysis of health policy, and its focus : an econimist may say health policy is about the allocation of scarce resources for health; a planner sees it as ways to influence the determinants of health in order to improve public health ; and for a doctor it is all about health services (Walt 1994). For Walt, health policy is synonymous with politics and deals explicitly with who influences policy making, how they exercise that influence, and under what conditions.
Devising a framework for incorporating politics into health policy needs to go beyond the point at which many health policy analysts stop : the content of policy. Many of the books and papers written on health policy focus on a particular policy, describing what it purports to do, the strategy to achieve set goals, and whether or not it has achieved them.
* Policy is decisions taken by those with responsibility for a particular policy area.
*Public policy refers to policies made by the state or the government, by those in the public sector.
*Health policy covers courses of action (an inaction) that affect the set of institutions, organizations, services and funding arrangement of the health care system(both public and private)
Reference :
Reference :
Buse,K., Mays,N.,Walt,G.,2005, Making Health Policy, Open University Press
