Multisector Partnerships in Population Health Improvement

Many new initiatives for population health improvement feature partnerships of leaders and organizations across multiple sectors of society.

The purpose of this article is to review:

1. the rationale for such partnerships as an important, if not essential, tool for population health improvement;
2. key organizational and contextual factors that appear to be associated with effective multisector partnerships; and
3. the limited evidence regarding the effect of such partnerships on population health outcomes.

We conclude that systems thinking—accounting for the collective effect of many actors and actions—is essential to organizing and sustaining efforts to improve population