(cont. from § 10) Public Health (cont. SoU12)

Nils Seye Larsen (MP)

Mr. Speaker! After some pauses, we have returned to the debate on public health. It feels good.

Public health is very close to my heart. It began when I entered municipal politics in Umeå and became chairman of the municipal executive board's newly formed sustainability committee, which received the responsibility for public health. At first, it might have seemed a bit strange that public health issues ended up with us, who were to work with transition regarding climate, environment, and social sustainability. However, it did not take long before I understood why it feels so natural. It is partly because we moved public health issues to a more central level in the municipality. It is also because everything is actually connected.

Work with public health is a long-term effort, and it is about how we act to promote a good life and good health among our inhabitants so that they can feel as well as possible for as long as possible. They should be able to live as long and as wonderfully as possible. When we sit and plan, develop, and shape our society, we have all the prerequisites to be able to work to promote individuals' public health.

We are well aware of the factors that actually affect us and that can be measured in pure numbers. One can see how many years shorter people from socioeconomically disadvantaged groups live. We know, for example, how differences in education levels can actually be measured and seen statistically in people's average life expectancy. This also applies to all other social factors and the health problems and challenges that exist.

The planning of a society – to try to shape a society that is as equal as possible – is therefore a good basis because that is where it begins. It begins with our children who grow up getting an opportunity. As I usually say, which also applies here: The best is when different children play together. Then they get the opportunity to sometimes break the structures that can be inherited when it comes to specifically public health-related challenges.

The same thing applies when we plan society to, for example, make it more sustainable and promote physical activity. We transition to sustainable modes of transport both to reduce harmful air and harmful noise and to ensure that our residents move more. We also make more room for green spaces, which increases well-being. All of this is parts of the public health work, just as much as when we try to ensure that our residents eat a diet that is good for health. Many times, the different parts also interact – a diet that is good for our health might also be good for the climate and the environment.

What I could observe in the public health work, by virtue of us working with many other municipalities, and which is quite interesting, is that the ways of working with public health vary very much. The entire public health work is also quite fragmented. There are authorities and recommendations, some lies with the regions and some lies in different places in different municipalities. Sometimes the fragmentation and lack of clarity also exist in the decision-making mandate and in the responsibility.

It is perhaps that which makes us in Miljöpartiet feel that we need to move forward and strengthen public health work – precisely because it has such a great impact on our society's inhabitants and can actually be a good way to keep down the burden on healthcare. Therefore, we feel that there is a need to take the step further and work to investigate and introduce a public health act in Sweden, similar to our Nordic neighboring countries.

Another thing that concerns public health work is that political courage is needed. Sometimes, when we have to make decisions that are correct based on pure empiricism but which might be a bit emotional, it is one politician or another who wavers.

When we, for example, talk about how we could mix the population, that is, ensure that we promote a socially sustainable society, there are those who quite quickly want to shout that we are forcibly mixing the inhabitants.

When we, for example, talk about food and meals and how we can work with recommendations so that people will be healthier and feel better, there are some who scoff a little at the idea that one wants to restrict access to meatballs in school meals. Others come up with their own suspicious theories – such as the chairman of the Committee on Agriculture, who has decided that testosterone levels decrease in us men if we eat less meat and that we then become more feminine, tend to vote left, etcetera.

This is actually harmful, because it is a questioning of the science that should form the basis of our equality work.

I intended to go into some matters that we in Miljöpartiet are driving and which are relevant, in addition to this matter regarding the Public Health Act. The first concerns the healthcare responsibility committee that has existed and which has produced a number of recommendations. We in Miljöpartiet support a great deal of what has been said there.

One point that has been highlighted is that the state would need to take greater responsibility when it comes to vaccinations. It is about coordination and vaccination programs. We fully agree with that. It should be added that Sweden has a long history of having successfully worked with national vaccination programs, but today there are unfortunately challenges when it comes to recommendations issued to regions. Inequalities between regions have been identified.

People's opportunities to participate in a vaccination program that can protect and promote their health should not depend on where they live. Therefore, I think it is perfectly natural to proceed with the recommendations – and perhaps that more vaccinations should be included in national vaccination programs. Then, it is perhaps not we politicians who should say that one vaccination or the other should be part of a program, but I feel that somewhere it should be decided based on the recommendations that the Public Health Agency or the medical community establish.

I want to raise another matter that I think is important and which concerns our reservation. Earlier during the parliamentary term, we have felt that it has been extremely important to work to promote mental health and suicide prevention. That was also why we in Miljöpartiet, together with the Socialdemokraterna, initiated the work to try to develop a strategy for mental health and suicide prevention. This work has grown gradually and led to that which was passed here in the Riksdag.

Based on that, a plan of action has been developed and presented, but we believe it is insufficient. What we would have liked to see is a plan of action with a much clearer connection to the strategy's overall goals, that the plan of action can be followed up with measurable indicators, and that it holds over several years. Therefore, we move that the government be tasked with developing a new plan of action based on those aspects.

We would also like that in the suicide prevention work, one does not only look at and learn from completed suicides but also works much more actively to try to collect systematic data regarding suicide attempts – what has led to them and what could be prevented – so that we can become even more proactive in the suicide prevention work.

In conclusion, I want to say something about the leisure card, which has been hammered through here, and public health. The leisure card has been introduced with all good intentions. There is a good intention, and I understand that one wanted to proceed with the proposal. The thought was therefore good, but the leisure card is erratic and ineffective.

I can only look at my own home region – which is Västerbotten, despite my speaking with a growling r – where there is an enormous variation. We have very many smaller municipalities where less than 10 percent of the children have leisure cards, while Umeå has one of the highest figures in Västerbotten. It may have to do with the fact that there is a more developed leisure life there and that certain associations have come further. But I notice that there is a challenge and that this does not reach all the way. A large part of the costs also go to administration.

We would rather have seen that, instead of dismantling civil society as has been done, one made larger long-term and sustainable investments in civil society – i.e., in study associations – and worked more methodically than what has been done here. The idea behind the leisure card was therefore good, but it does not go all the way.

We of course support all our reservations, but I move for approval only to reservation 14 regarding an action plan for mental health and suicide prevention.

In this speech, Malte Tängmark Roos (MP) agreed.

The deliberation was hereby concluded.

(A decision was to be taken on 4 February.)

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)