Accountability cycle – among core concepts in sustainability of public health actions

Abstract The accountability framework (by Kraak et all, 2014) is used to allow for the conceptualisation of the approach in sustainability work in JA PreventNCD. The cycle involves four stages: taking account (assessing the level of evidence), sharing the account (communicating the evidence and decisions based on this evidence), holding to account (enforcing plans of actions and decisions actions of plans based on the evidence) and responding to the account (holding relevant actors to account to implement necessary improvements). While taking and sharing the account seem to be well elaborated in public health, that is not the case for holding and responding to the account. Foreseen sustainability elements of integrated policies in the “taking the account” stage are including joint institutionalized monitoring mechanisms and development of indicators for sustainable reporting. While “sharing the account”, mixed methods approach including structured interviews with key stakeholders at the EU and national levels and questionnaires are utilized, to collect information to facilitate the sustainability of JA results. Within JA PreventNCD, 22 possible sustainability elements of policies and practices have been identified and majority of them are distributed to the first two steps of the accountability cycle, too, with least sustainability elements being attributed to the fourth, responding stage of the cycle. Pilots or practices, which form substantial part of the JAPreventNCD, take in consideration also the promising and emerging practices, in addition to the good and best practices. For pilots and practices, accountability cycle methodology would be used within the scope of the Best-Practices portal of EU, and pilots would be clustered according to the sustainability elements. Indicative targets to evaluate progress (or its absence) of Sustainability Action Plan will be identified, based in the accountability cycle.