More than half of the municipalities in Norway report drug misuse as the most important public health challenge. Following a whole‐of‐government tradition, the ambition is to achieve horizontal and vertical coordination between different policy areas to address complex problems, such as youth drug use, and avoid fragmented services. This study aims to offer new perspectives on how governmental structures shape local drug prevention. By including the perspective of both local policy makers and outreach social workers, we can come closer to understanding how local drug prevention transforms policy into practice. The study will thus explore how policy makers and outreach social workers describe the local drug prevention strategy and how the outreach social workers implement it in practice. An instrumental case study of one Norwegian municipality was used to investigate the structures for drug prevention in detail. Data were gathered through 14 interviews with public officials from the relevant policy areas and outreach social workers from a drug prevention outreach service. The data were analysed using a thematic framework analysis. This study demonstrated that the policy makers’ and outreach social workers’ descriptions of drug prevention highlighted the creation of good living conditions and promotion of protective factors surrounding at‐risk youths. This perspective may offer a broader approach to drug policy, which includes many policy areas. While collaboration was regarded as paramount, the policy makers described a “siloed” organisation that made it difficult to collaborate. The outreach social workers, however, indicated that they were able to navigate the “siloed” structures. We discuss the structural conditions surrounding outreach social workers that shape the implementation of policies, such as the resource perspective. The discussion shows that outreach social workers may act as a safety net for a potentially fragmented municipal structure for drug prevention.

The Norwegian Government emphasizes intersectoral collaboration to achieve health goals such as reducing social health differences. However, research shows that achieving fruitful collaboration between different organizations and the public sector is challenging. The sports sector is one potential partner for such collaboration. Although the Government calls for intersectoral collaboration that includes the sports sector, there are few concrete guidelines for how this may be implemented in practice. Guided by The Bergen Model of Collaborative Functioning, the purpose of this study was to explore factors that promote or inhibit collaboration in an intersectoral project involving the sports sector, NGOs, and public sector. The current project aimed to work towards creating health promoting activities aimed at vulnerable youths. Methods: A qualitative case study of the Sports Project with interviews of eleven collaborative partners. Results: Factors promoting collaboration amongst the different partners were having a common mission, an appreciation of the partners’ complementary skills and knowledge, and a consistent user perspective. Conclusions: By orienting the collaboration towards the users’ needs, the partners have succeeded in creating tailored health-promoting activities for vulnerable youths. However, a challenge remains in transforming the collaborative project into a sustainable structure.

Summary: Purpose: Norwegian municipalities report that drug misuse is the most important public health challenge. The municipalities play a unique role in drug prevention aimed at youth, since young people rely on several services in their daily lives that are organized by different municipal departments. However, the municipal structure is described as siloed, and the policy areas as differentiated. This situation has led to a need for integration between different policy sectors to prevent drug use and promote health. The following study explores how policymakers describe the structures for integration within local government in practice with regard to drug prevention aimed at youth, contributing to the ongoing debate on collaboration and integration in response to public health challenges.Methods: A single case study design was used to investigate the accounts of policymakers from different municipal departments in a Norwegian municipality following Axelsson and Axelsson's conceptual scheme of integration.Findings: Collaboration between departments was viewed as important to successfully address drug prevention; however, the policymakers recognized problems with integration. The participants described confusion regarding ownership between the departments and a perceived lack of a mandate for collaboration.Conclusions: The findings and discussion illustrate that integration of drug prevention in a siloed structure relies on departments appreciating their respective roles in drug prevention and advisers experiencing a mandate to manage the siloes that exist in the organization. By gaining a better understanding of the siloed structures, we can provide valuable information needed to navigate them.

The transition of patients with complex needs from hospital to municipal rehabilitation following moderate and severe brain injury is challenging. This qualitative study explored the municipal service allocation processes within such transitions. The caseworkers’ comprehensive task of combining patients’ preferences and needs, healthcare providers’ recommendations and municipal guidelines and service allocation were analysed. Data comprised of patients’ health records, meeting observations and semi-structured interviews with municipal staff, patients and next of kin. Results demonstrated that the issue of most concern was the location of where the patient was to continue municipal rehabilitation. Municipal caseworkers gathered extensive information, including recommendations from healthcare providers and preferences of patients and next of kin. These were frequently in contrast to the municipal guidelines’ requirements and the services’ organisational structure. The discrepancies led to tension, which was difficult to manoeuvre. This study indicates that incorporating individually tailored services into the daily service allocation practice can be demanding and even dilemmatic. The designated focus on the transition of patients with complex rehabilitation needs gives insights into how service allocation, user involvement and coordination policies are acted out in practice and may directly influence rehabilitation trajectories.

Promoting the health of children remains a global and national priority, as reflected in the proliferation of public health policies, strategies, and guidelines over the past decade. While these documents aim to improve health outcomes, they also play a critical role in shaping how children and young people are constructed as health subjects. This study critically examines recent national public health policy documents from Sweden and Norway through a health promotion lens, focusing on the discursive positioning of children. Drawing on theoretical insights from critical childhood studies and public health policy research to frame our discourse analysis, we identify dominant narratives that frame children primarily as passive, dependent, and vulnerable. These adult-centric discourses, rooted in risk and knowledge paradigms, offer limited space for agency, participation, or rights-based approaches. Despite strong rhetorical commitments to equality and child health, the policies risk reinforcing hierarchical power relations and deficit-based views of childhood. We argue that aligning public health policy with health promotion principles requires reframing children not merely as future investments, but as present rights-holders and active contributors to their own health. Embedding participatory mechanisms and expanding comparative research across welfare contexts may foster more inclusive and empowering policy development. This study contributes to ongoing debates on child agency, policy framing, and the role of discourse in shaping health promotion practice.

Outreach work is an established yet conceptually fragmented field, lacking a systematic understanding of its organization, methodologies, and outcomes. To inform the development of youth-friendly services in Norway, this study explores outreach work targeting children and youth (aged 10–25) in vulnerable life situations. An integrated multicomponent design was employed, combining a scoping review of international literature with expert interviews and stakeholder workshops involving practitioners and youth. Findings indicate that outreach encompasses a wide range of practices, from street-based engagement to digital modalities. Across this diversity, a consistent core emerges: relational work as the foundational mechanism. Conceptualized here as fringe work, outreach operates at the margins of formal service systems to establish trust and facilitate adaptive support and processes of change among youth who might otherwise remain unreached. At the same time, the field is characterized by substantial conceptual ambiguity, particularly regarding the distinction between outreach as a primary methodology and as a supplementary follow-up strategy. Existing research documents positive individual and relational outcomes – such as enhanced safety, coping, and life skills – yet evidence of long-term and system-level impact remains limited. This gap appears to be linked to short-term funding structures and governance frameworks that inadequately capture relational processes. Drawing on theories of mattering, the discussion highlights how structural conditions (including siloed organization and performance-oriented management) constrain relational practice. A more precise, relation-based definition of outreach work is proposed, alongside recommendations to safeguard its relational core through strengthened representativeness, long-term institutional anchoring, and hybrid models integrating physical and digital outreach.