Between Knowing and Doing: The Role of Political Salience in the Adoption of Health in All Policies in the Netherlands and Beyond

Context: Scholars have long shown that policies outside healthcare—like labor market, housing, and social assistance—affect health. Health in All Policies (HiAP) is a collaborative policy approach that integrates health into these sectors. Most research on HiAP adoption focuses on a few well-known cases, highlighting the importance of policy learning and political dynamics. This article updates this knowledge by analyzing the Netherlands alongside Finland and England, asking: How can we understand HiAP adoption in the Netherlands? Methods: We studied the Dutch case using primary and secondary sources and compared it to Finland and England as shadow cases based on existing analyses in secondary sources. Findings: Policy learning is necessary but not sufficient for HiAP adoption. In the Netherlands, adoption was not partisan, yet still political. The political salience of health inequality was the key factor driving HiAP adoption in the Netherlands and played this decisive yet less visible role in the shadow cases as well. Conclusions: The Dutch case shows that HiAP can be a product of coalitional strategies outside legislative politics and respond to those coalitions' formulations of problems. Both policy learning and political salience are important, but it is their interaction that best explains whether HiAP is adopted.