4858 Mental Health Report - National University of Ireland, Galway

Collaborative Practice and Policy
organisational relations. The Australian Institute of Management (1994), cited in
Sindall, defines a strategic alliance as “a long term partnership involving two or
more organisations formed to benefit from the synergy of working together in
an environment of trust, sharing information and resources to achieve a common
objective”.
In its Health for All Policy Framework for the 21st century (1999), the World
Health Organisation highlights the need for multi-sectoral collaboration to tackle
the physical, economic, social and cultural determinants of health. Furthermore
this documents states that multi-sectoral action should provide a more effective,
efficient and sustainable way to improve health. There is great potential in
partnerships that enable different people and organisations to support each
other by leveraging, combining, and capitalising on their complementary
strengths and capabilities (Lasker et al. 2001).
International collaboration should be initiated, according to Hosman (2000), for
the following reasons:
• Scarcity of resources and lack of influence
• Breadth and complexity of the field. We need consensus on evidence-based
principles, and we need more in-depth knowledge about a large number of
evidence-based programmes and policies and insight into their costeffectiveness,
especially cross-cultural applicability, efficacy, and effectiveness.
The only feasible answer is for better and more co-ordinated collaboration
across countries and regions.
• Collaboration between research centres located across different countries and
regions can produce innovations and integration in theory resulting from the
cross-fertilisation of different theoretical paradigms and scientific traditions.
• Growing insight into the inter-relatedness of different health and social
problems.
In the United States foundations and government agencies have invested
hundreds of millions of dollars to promote collaboration around health issues.
Although many of these partnerships and collaborations may differ in form, in
the particular goals they are trying to achieve, and in whom they bring together,
they all share a common impetus: an appreciation that, in today’s environment,
most objectives related to health cannot be achieved by any single person,
organisation, or sector working alone (Lasker et al 2001).
STAKES in Finland and the World Health Organisation have also drawn attention
to and highlighted the importance of increased collaboration between countries
(STAKES 1999; STAKES 2001; WHO 2001). Collaboration is now also a feature of
the proposed European Union Public Health Strategy.
Although health problems may be affected by cultural factors, the similarities of
health problems across geopolitical boundaries are much more important than
their differences. In order to make significant progress in addressing health
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