Where does our health begin? Health starts where we are born, grow, play, work and age, as established in a robust scientific literature summarized by the World Health Organization (WHO) Commission on the Social Determinants of Health. The social determinants are the distribution of wealth, income, education, and so on; and the government policies that shape these other determinants.

Health promotion is the domain of social, economic and environmental ministries, whereas ministries of health treat illness more than they prevent it. A commitment to health in all policies invites analysis of public decisions that shape major costs of living, and encourages governments to collect revenue by taxing more what undermines the social determinants of health while taxing less what promotes them.

Furthermore, increased medical spending is not unambiguously good for population health when social spending does not keep pace.

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This paper was originally published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal