National Health Plan (NHP) 2009-2020

The National Health Plan (NHP) 2009-2020 is a national sectoral plan of Estonia. The strategic general objective of the field in the NHP 2009–2020 is a longer health adjusted life expectancy by decreasing premature mortality and illnesses. The priorities for achieving the strategic general objective have been divided among five thematic fields: increased social cohesion and equal opportunities, ensuring healthy and safe development for children, shaping of a living, working and learning environment supporting health, facilitation of healthy lifestyle and ensuring the sustainability of the health care system. The priorities of all those thematic fields rely on the following core values: protection of health as a human right, common responsibility for health, equal opportunities and justice, social inclusion. Highlighting of social cohesion and equal opportunities means that everyone is expected to participate in the activities and decisions of the society. Ensuring healthy and safe development to children and adolescents gives them an opportunity to grow healthy and become active members of the society. Healthy living, working and learning environment is equally important both to children and other members of the society. A clean and safe environment is a foundation enabling people to use their opportunities to maximum both as individuals and as a society, thus decreasing and eliminating environmental risks is of primary importance. If the essence of the three fields above was creation of prerequisites and opportunities for health development, the main question regarding healthy lifestyle is whether and how we use those opportunities. Thus, in addition to creating opportunities, it is necessary to increase people's awareness of those opportunities, healthy behaviour and influence of one's choices to one's health in order to live a longer, healthier and fuller life. All factors deteriorating health are unfortunately not avoidable by creation of opportunities and individual choices. Existence of an efficient and patient-focused health care system and constant adaptation thereof to changing diseases, opportunities and wishes of patients is thus an important part of the National Health Plan.
The Plan further provides for: increasing the awareness of people of balanced and nutritious eating patterns, and integrate the topics related to eating and food into the basic and in-service training of teachers and state curricula; ensuring the availability of relevant materials and trainings for target groups and related groups; ensuring an environment supporting healthy eating choices of people and observation of the principles of balanced eating in institutional catering; develop counselling service on nutrition and ensure the availability thereof to risk groups; regularly monitoring and assessing the eating habits of the population, trends of overweight (including the monitoring of anthropometric figures) and relevant interventions and carry out a risk-usefulness evaluation analysis on nutrition (eating, food safety, etc.); supporting institutional catering and organise legislation on food and nutrition and inspection thereof within the field of competence; and increasing knowledge of balanced and nutritious eating and labelling on food; using the possibilities and services aimed at healthy eating.