Strategiatyöllä hyvinvointia? strategiakäytäntöjen kehittyneisyys kuntien hyvinvoinnin ja terveyden edistämisessä

Municipalities play a crucial role in health and welfare promotion. Promotion should have a strong participative, collaborative emphasis and it should be strategically oriented. The purpose of this article was to examine the practices and contents of health and welfare promotion strategy work in municipal context. Empirical data consisted of 1) 46 municipal welfare strategy documents, which were analysed using a special maturity model developed for the study and
2) 26 in-depth interviews collected from municipal managers, sector managers and municipal health coordinators and analysed using content analysis. Findings showed that strategy work is based on the limited conceptions of health and wellbeing, participation and collaboration has not been fully implemented and strategic actors are uncertain about making strategic choices. To develop the maturity of the strategy work, we suggest increasing the polyphonic and collaborative conditions with unifying leadership and with the tools of social marketing.