Public Health Fund Grant 2017

On Friday, Health Minister Óttarr Proppé allocated just over ninety million kroner in grants from the Public Health Fund to 139 projects and research studies. The grant recipients are located throughout the country, and the projects are intended for all age groups. See the list of projects and grant recipients for 2017. Hafnarfjörður is one of this year's recipients of a grant.

The health town of Hafnarfjörður

The City of Hafnarfjörður's project is to implement a health promotion strategy (public health policy) in a targeted manner, in cross-disciplinary collaboration with all relevant stakeholders in the community.
and prevention in the areas of nutrition, physical activity, mental well-being, and alcohol and drug prevention
(and tobacco prevention) for residents. The project promotes health promotion for all age groups within
Hafnarfjörður. A focus on four factors: nutrition, exercise, well-being and
Quality of life/prevention. It is intended that each element will be the focus for one
year at a time, but other aspects will also be worked on in the process, which are easy to
to carry out. The Municipality of Hafnarfjörður received a grant of 500,000 kr for the project from the Public Health Fund in 2017.

Applications to the Public Health Fund – 2017 allocations

In the 2017 call for applications, emphasis was placed, among other things, on measures to improve mental health, suicide prevention, alcohol, tobacco and drug prevention, and projects aimed at minority groups to promote health equity. The Minister awarded the grants on the basis of recommendations from the Board of the Public Health Fund, which assessed applications according to how they aligned with the fund's role as defined in Act on the Chief Medical Officer and Public Health, no. 41/2007  and The Ministry of Welfare's public health policy

The ceremony began with a speech from the Minister of Health, Óttarr Proppé. This was followed by a speech from Kristín Heimisdóttir, chairperson of the Public Health Fund, and a presentation of the project by Helga Arnardóttir, a former grant recipient. Her project, HappApp, is one of the initiatives to have received a grant from the Public Health Fund. Happ App is an app based on the science of positive psychology. The app contains exercises that promote the users' happiness and mental well-being. Among the projects receiving a grant from the Public Health Fund in 2017 are the Mindfulness Centre's project on the implementation of mindfulness in six primary schools, according to a British model, a project by Ársæll Arnarason which is a study of the health and living conditions of schoolchildren in Iceland in an international comparison, a project by the Municipality of Akranes on advice and measures to promote the health of people aged 60 and over, and a joint project by Kyní, of the Astráð Foundation, FKB and the Health-Promoting Secondary Schools on condom vending machines in secondary schools to combat the unusually high incidence of chlamydia in the country.