In April 2019, the Center organized and hosted a workshop entitled “Health and Happiness in Policy and Practice Across the Globe: The Role of Science and Evidence,” whose overarching aim was to review policy activities that promote happiness and well-being across the globe by the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. The workshop sought to develop a landscape of how happiness is being promoted through policies and practices around the world and to examine the place of health in policies and practices to promote happiness. Participants discussed the extent to which these policies and practices are informed by evidence and how the evidence, if any, is being translated to inform policies and practices, and identified next steps to address gaps in research and translation in health and happiness.
The workshop took place at the Harvard Chan School and brought together a multidisciplinary group of researchers, policymakers, and practitioners with backgrounds in public policy, social sciences, academia, and politics both in the U.S. and internationally. Among the speakers were policymakers from Bhutan, the United Arab Emirates, Massachusetts, and California, who provided examples from their own experiences of how happiness can be tracked and how policies that promote happiness can be implemented on a large scale. The diverse group of practitioners and scholars are working to develop next steps for action. A white paper that reviewed the landscape of well-being policies informed the deliberations of the workshop and will be published and made available to a wide academic and professional audience.
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