Behavioural Policies for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxi

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2. Understanding the Challenges in Public Health Policymaking: Introduction

   • Kathrin Loer, Benjamin Ewert

   Pages 1-10

3. Underlying Assumptions in Health Promotion Policymaking

   • Benjamin Ewert

   Pages 11-28

4. Approaches and Instruments in Health Promotion and the Prevention of Diseases

   • Kathrin Loer

   Pages 29-52

5. Healthy Nations: Behavioural Approaches in Public Health Policy

   • Jessica Pykett

   Pages 53-72

6. Who Are the Policymakers and What Are Their Interests?

   • Holger Strassheim, Kathrin Loer

   Pages 73-92

7. Conclusion: Towards a Behaviourally Informed Health Citizenship

   • Benjamin Ewert, Kathrin Loer

   Pages 93-104

8. Back Matter

   Pages 105-109

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Policy-making in public health is highly complex, which is one reason why the behavioural turn is now playing a significant role in this field. Against this backdrop, this book aims to develop a theoretical understanding of how policymakers take up public health challenges and how policies change over the course of time. Accordingly, the book reveals policy-makers' underlying assumptions, which influence the way in which public policy seeks to promote the health status of citizens. In a second step, the book presents a typology of policy instruments and applies this to the field of health promotion. This typology introduces an option that adds behaviourally informed insights to the toolbox of political analysis. Empirical evidence of behavioural health policies can be found in various countries around the world, and the book presents both relevant country studies and examples from the supra- and international level. Finally, the book discusses the implications of the rise of behavioural health policies, proposes a specific concept of health citizenship and reviews state-citizen relations. The book is useful for academics from health-related disciplines, such as political science, sociology, and public health, as well as for policy-makers, practitioners and students.

• public health
• contemporary challenges
• policy-making
• individual and societal dimensions
• health promotion
• social determinants of health
• behavioural interventions
• health nudges
• policy instruments
• behavioural insights
• choice architecture
• Global public policy
• urban health
• lifestyles
• practices
• human geography
• scientific expertise
• epistemic authority
• stakeholders
• citizenship

• FernUniversität in Hagen, Hagen, Germany

  Benjamin Ewert, Kathrin Loer

Benjamin Ewert is a social and political scientist at Heidelberg School of Education, Germany. There he is part of the research cluster Society & Health. Benjamin is interested in theoretical and empirical questions in the realm of public policy and public health. He especially focuses on service users and citizenship issues.


Kathrin Loer is a political scientist at the FernUniversitaet in Hagen, Germany. After working as a political consultant in health policy she returned to academia in 2013. Her research focuses on health and consumer policies but also on theoretical topics in public policy. Current research projects aim at linking theoretical and conceptual questions of public policy with empirical research on health and energy policy.

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