Environment and Health are Closely Related

Environment and Health are Closely Related

6 Cooperation

Denmark is a well-organised country, where public institutions generally are well aware of each other‘s objectives, responsibilities, and tasks. This applies for both administration and research. This Strategy for Environmental Factors and Health has established a collective and enhanced point of departure and a basis to achieve more cohesive initiatives to protect the population.

Objectives and initiatives in the near future

The environment and health area is extremely broad, and covers both technical and administrative aspects. At the same time it is a dynamic area, where new finds of pollutants giving rise to health concerns, or new realisations that a pollutant is more serious than first presumed can very well lead to acute needs for changes or prioritisation, development of new strategies, or even amendments to legislation. New realisations in an area can mean interventions in many places to ensure the necessary initiatives. Often, several authorities will depend on each other‘s knowledge, and cooperation can be a prerequisite for being able to supply the necessary initiatives.

Cooperation at administrative level

Today there is a division of responsibilities between the ministries involved in regulating environmental factors and health. The National Board of Health has primary responsibility for general health monitoring, while the responsibilities of other ministries are more linked to preventive initiatives such as setting limit values and detailed requirements for the different sources of environmental factors.

In realising the Strategy, it may be beneficial to enhance coordination and cooperation in general. Better cooperation could be a framework to formulate future initiative areas and objectives, and to manage future problems within the area. In addition to this, there is the government wish that people should have access information about, and be involved in, setting priorities and initiatives by the authorities.

Therefore, it is proposed to set up a Cooperation Committee - a Coordinating Working Group - between the authorities for the environment and health. The idea is for cooperation between the Ministry of the Interior and Health, the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, the Ministry of Employment, the National Agency for Enterprise and Housing, the Ministry of Transport, and the Ministry of the Environment.

The objective of the Coordinating Working Group is to ensure coordinated and cohesive action against environmental factors that can affect health, and in particular within areas of common interest.

In particular, the Working Group should ensure that objectives and initiatives in this Strategy are followed up. The Working Group will highlight securing cohesion in the level of protection for food, the working environment, and the external environment and indoor climate. At the same time, there will be a significant benefit from cross-disciplinary focus on setting limit values for food, the working environment, and the external environment (see section 5.1). In this context, there may be a need to involve other players, e.g. from regional and municipal authorities, Medical Health Officers, industry, research, and organisations in sub-groups, or in some other way ensure that knowledge from these parties is included.

The Working Group will promote information and communication about environmental factors, health, and risks.

The Working Group will maintain and develop the integrated description of the area established by this Strategy, namely environmental factors and health. In 2003, the Working Group will submit a prioritised plan for work, and before the end of 2005 it will prepare a report on the Strategy for Environmental Factors and Health. The report will contain a review of the progress of the work to date, and proposals for future priority areas.

Project groups for relevant work areas could be set up under the Coordinating Working Group. For example, the existing project groups between different ministries could be linked to the Working Group. Or, a network could be established further to specific action plans, for example as has happened during the follow-up to the Dioxin Action Plan.

Research

See section 5.3 on research.