Koncept socijalnih investicija u zdravstvenom sustavu

Focusing on human capital, social investments provide an answer to the social challenges facing social development in recent decades. In the context of human capital, investing in health has multiple channels of influence especially if it is present from an early age: a person will stay active longer, be more productive and contribute to the economy and society. The paper aims to gain an insight into the extent to which Croatia’s health policy is in line with the concept of social investment presented through the European Commission’s document Investing in Health, which builds on the basic document on social investment: Towards Social Investment for Growth and Cohesion. For this purpose, the analysis of strategic health policy documents and the comparative analysis of data on investments in the health system from both the Eurostat database and domestic data sources are used. There is also a detailed comparative analysis of (in) equality of access to health services in Croatia in the EU context, and of the importance of individual components of health care from the perspective of social investment. It is noticed that the Croatian health policy follows the idea of social investment described in the document Investing in Health with certain shortcomings, but there is a shift towards overcoming some shortcomings such as, for example, a serious lack of evaluation in the implementation of certain measures and programs adopted. Key words: health investment, social investments, human capital, health policy