5: WHO Healthy Settings and Global Health Development

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2015–2030 were adopted to strive for a world that is ‘just, equitable and inclusive’ as well as ‘sustainable’. The priority risk behaviours that contribute to causing the global burden of diseases are often established early in life (Gakidou et al., 2017) and research findings have also confirmed the existence of common determinants (e.g. pathways in the brain) and the inter-relationships between the determinants of risk behaviours and the behaviours themselves (Blum & Dick, 2011).

Improvement of behaviour and the well-being of citizens would not naturally occur without a specific ‘intentional intervention’. There are different approaches, visions, models and tools available to each country, in accordance with its national circumstances and priorities, to achieve sustainable development. ‘Healthy Setting’ is a value-based approach which has the ability of translation into language to fit the context of the particular setting (Dooris, 2006; Dooris et al., 2007). Green, Poland, and Rootman (2000) defined setting as a place comprising a location and its social context in which people interact, for example, schools, workplaces, market places, communities and hospitals, and it can include the arenas of sustained interaction, with pre-existing structures, policies, characteristics, institutional values and both formal and informal social sanctions on behaviours (Green et al., 2000). This has provided a broader conceptualisation of settings compared to the World Health Organisation (WHO) definition of a setting as having physical boundaries, a range of people with defined roles and an organisation (WHO, 2000).