Evidence on how to practice intersectoral collaboration for health equity: a scoping review

The persistence of health inequities is reflected in repeated calls for intersectoral collaboration on the social determinants of health, specifically through public policy action. Yet, how to do intersectoral collaboration specifically for policy action toward health equity is articulated rather scarcely in the scientific literature. With this scoping review, we intended to generate insight into current peer-reviewed literature to identify gaps about evidence-based approaches to practices of intersectoral collaboration for health equity-oriented policy action. Seven search engines were used: Proquest, Web of Science, CINAHL, Pubmed, Sociological Abstracts, Project Muse and ERIC. Social determinants of health, including public policy and intersectoral collaboration, are related concepts for the health equity agenda and were used as a conceptual framework to map selected literature. Out of 227 articles, our review identified 64 articles describing intersectoral collaboration specifically in relation to public policy. Of those articles with a policy topic, 10 had a focus on broad public policy areas, while 51 publications articulated specific policies relevant to the determinants of health and only three articles examined effective practices of intersectoral collaboration in public policy through phenomenology, literature review and case study research. The majority of policy-focused publications described that collaboration was used as a strategy to address intersectoral public policy issues, but failed to report how the process of collaboration unfolded. Perhaps it is time to re-direct the gaze onto collaborative teams to generate evidence of effective intersectoral collaboration practices in public policy.