The Healthy Cities Movement

Urban Health ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 285-292
Author(s):  
Agis D. Tsouros
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Institutional Change ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
City Government ◽  
World Health ◽  
Healthy Cities ◽  
Political Commitment ◽  
Municipal Governments ◽  
The World ◽  
Innovative Action

The World Health Association Healthy Cities movement aims to engage municipal governments in a range of activities to generate health in cities, through political commitment, institutional change, capacity building, and innovative action for health, equity and sustainable development. At core, the movement aims to put health at the heart of social, economic, and cultural agendas of city government and has been at the forefront of a global move toward recognizing cities’ potential to transform themselves to improve their residents’ health. More than 100 cities are part of the WHO European Healthy Cities Network. This chapter discusses the vision behind, goals of, challenges faced by, and successes of the healthy cities movement, with an eye to lessons learned that can be applied more broadly to urban health.

The Partnership for Healthy Cities

Urban Health ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 293-297
Author(s):  
Ariella Rojhani ◽  
Charity Hung ◽  
Sally Chew ◽  
Christina Honeysett ◽  
Sandra Mullin ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cardiovascular Disease ◽  
High Impact ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Global Network ◽  
World Health ◽  
Noncommunicable Diseases ◽  
Healthy Cities ◽  
The World ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
Successes And Challenges

The Partnership for Healthy Cities is a global network of cities that is committed to reducing morbidity and mortality from noncommunicable diseases among their populations. Funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies, in partnership with the World Health Organization and Vital Strategies, the Partnership engages cities that are willing to take on high-impact innovative approaches to prevent and ameliorate the burden of noncommunicable diseases (e.g., cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, etc.). This chapter discusses the vision behind, the goals of, and the successes and challenges of the Partnership for Healthy Cities, with a particular focus on lessons learned that can broadly be applied to urban health.

How India Fights with COVID-19 with Learning from Highly Affected Countries

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pooja Sharma ◽  
Karan Veer
Keyword(s):  
Risk Assessment ◽  
Gene Sequencing ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
World Health ◽  
Global Risk ◽  
The World ◽  
Global Risk Assessment ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
Very High ◽  
Breathing Problem

: It was 11 March 2020 when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the name COVID-19 for coronavirus disease and also described it as a pandemic. Till that day 118,000 cases were confirmed of pneumonia with breathing problem throughout the world. At the start of New Year when COVID-19 came into knowledge a few days later, the gene sequencing of the virus was revealed. Today the number of confirmed cases is scary, i.e. 9,472,473 in the whole world and 484,236 deaths have been recorded by WHO till 26 June 2020. WHO's global risk assessment is very high [1]. The report is enlightening the lessons learned by India from the highly affected countries.

scholarly journals Four pandemics: lessons learned, lessons lost

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
World Health ◽  
Swine Flu ◽  
Global Public Health ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
The World ◽  
Spanish Flu ◽  
Future Events ◽  
Health Organization

In the past 100 years, the world has faced four distinctly different pandemics: the Spanish flu of 1918-1919, the SARS pandemic of 2003, the H1N1 or “swine flu” pandemic of 2012, and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Each public health crisis exposed specific systemic shortfalls and provided public health lessons for future events. The Spanish flu revealed a nursing shortage and led to a great appreciation of nursing as a profession. SARS showed the importance of having frontline clinicians be able to work with regulators and those producing guidelines. H1N1 raised questions about the nature of a global organization such as the World Health Organization in terms of the benefits and potential disadvantages of leading the fight against a long-term global public health threat. In the era of COVID-19, it seems apparent that we are learning about both the blessing and curse of social media.

The healthy settings approach: Healthy Cities and environmental health indicators

2018 ◽  
pp. 264-270
Author(s):  
Evelyne de Leeuw ◽  
Premila Webster
Keyword(s):  
Urban Health ◽  
Health Indicators ◽  
Evidence Base ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
World Health ◽  
Healthy Cities ◽  
The World ◽  
Global Movement ◽  
Settings Approach ◽  
Health Organization

‘Healthy Cities’ is a global movement in urban health that grew from a Canadian initiative in the mid-1980s to a World Health Organization programme. Healthy Cities are characterized by a strong commitment to values such as sustainability, solidarity, justice, and participation embedded in a vision that embraces ecological and community perspectives. The movement comes in different manifestations around the world; this chapter focuses mostly on the European evidence base and discusses efforts that have been made over three decades to establish validated sets of indicators to measure and assess urban health and Healthy Cities. True to the nature of the movement, indicators are both socioecological and biomedical, qualitative, and quantitative. This presents challenges to validity and applicability across urban environments.

scholarly journals The effects of COVID-19 pandemic on the provision of urgent surgery: a perspective from the USA

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Abhiman Cheeyandira
Keyword(s):  
Disease Control ◽  
Surgical Care ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
World Health ◽  
Urgent Surgery ◽  
The World ◽  
Control And Prevention ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
Made In

Abstract Corona virus pandemic has affected all the 50 states in the USA. States such as NY, CA and WA being the most affected. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website, as of 28 March 2020, the total number of cases in the USA is over 103 300 and number of deaths to 1668. In the coming weeks, COVID-19 rates are expected to begin skyrocketing and hit a peak in late April/May/June given lessons learned from China, Italy and others. COVID-19 has been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) as confirmed cases approach 575 444 patients with 26 654 deaths across over 160 countries, as of 28 March 2020. There is a lot of impact on management of the urgent and emergent cases. This article highlights the changes that are being made in delivering urgent and emergent surgical care during the pandemic.

scholarly journals Do Healthy City Performance Awards Lead to Health in All Policies? A Case of Taiwan

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (6) ◽  
pp. 1061 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nuan-Ching Huang ◽  
Hsien-Wen Kuo ◽  
Te-Jen Hung ◽  
Susan Hu
Keyword(s):  
Innovation Performance ◽  
World Health ◽  
Intersectoral Collaboration ◽  
Health In All Policies ◽  
Healthy Cities ◽  
Health Departments ◽  
Healthy City ◽  
The World ◽  
Setting Approach ◽  
Health Organization

The Healthy Cities (HC) Project, which was introduced by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1986, has been recognized as the best setting approach for health promotion. However, very few studies have addressed how to use HC approaches to establish public policies in non-health departments in cities. This paper describes the strategies for the HC Performance Awards used in Taiwan to draw attention from different departments and to sustain intersectoral collaboration for the purpose of establishing Health in All Policies (HiAP). The methods include: (1) setting up the Taiwan Healthy City Alliance; (2) establishing HC Innovation Performance Awards; (3) reviewing the award applications according to seven criteria; and (4) analyzing the topic content of the award applications. We collected 961 HC award applications during 2013–2016 to analyze their content. The results showed that the number of applications increased nearly every year while significantly more non-health departments applied for the awards compared to health departments (73.3% vs. 26.7%). The award rates of non-health departments have also increased twice from 13.9% in 2013 to 25.8% in 2016. By examining the topics of the award winners, we concluded that “HC Innovation Performance Awards” indeed provide a role and opportunity for political involvement, intersectoral collaboration, co-opetition and capacity building that is necessary for establishing health in all policies.

Panel 2.9: Repair and Recovery of Health Systems

2005 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 428-431
Author(s):  
Bjorn Melgaard ◽  
Maria Cristina Profili ◽  
Peter Heimann ◽  
Aryono Pusponegoro ◽  
Edward O'Rourke ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Needs Assessment ◽  
World Health Organization ◽  
Capacity Building ◽  
Health Systems ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
World Health ◽  
Tsunami Disaster ◽  
The World ◽  
Health Organization

AbstractThis is a summary of the presentations and discussion of Panel 2.9, Repair and Recovery of Health Systemsof the Conference, Health Aspects of the Tsunami Disaster in Asia, convened by the World Health Organization (WHO) in Phuket, Thailand, 04–06 May 2005. The topics discussed included issues related to the repair and recovery of health systems as pertain to the damage created by the Tsunami. It is presented in the following major sections: (1) needs assessment; (2) coordination; (3) filling gaps; (4) capacity building; (5) what was done well, and what should have been done better; (6) lessons learned; and (7) recommendations. Recommendations included: (1) how to make health systems better prepared for coping with disasters; and (2) how to support preparedness in local communities.

scholarly journals Panel 2.18: Logistics, Information Technology (IT), and Telecommunications in Crisis Management

2005 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 464-467 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terrence De Silva ◽  
Jyotsna Chikersal ◽  
Nigel Snoad ◽  
Brent Woodworth ◽  
Cherif Ghaly ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Information Technology ◽  
Crisis Management ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
World Health ◽  
Tsunami Disaster ◽  
Needs Assessments ◽  
The World ◽  
Logistics Information ◽  
Major Section ◽  
Health Organization

AbstractThis is a summary of the presentations and discussion of Panel 2.18, Logistics, Information Technology, and Telecommunication in crisis Management of the Conference, Health Aspects of the Tsunami Disaster in Asia, convened by the World Health Organization (WHO) in Phuket, Thailand, 04–06 May 2005. The topics discussed included issues related to logistics, information Technology (IT), and crisis communication pertaining to the responses to the damage created by the Tsunami. It iss presented in the following major sections: (1) issues; (2) lessons learned; (3)what was done well; (4)what could have been done better; and (5)conclusions and recommendations. Each major section is presented in four sub-sections: (1) needs assessments; (2) coordination; (3) filling the gaps; and (4) capacity building.

scholarly journals Independent Review and Investigation Mechanisms to Prevent Future Pandemics: A Proposed Way Forward

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanna Lehtimaki ◽  
Aisling Reidy ◽  
Kassim Nishtar ◽  
Sara Darehschori ◽  
Andrew Painter ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
World Health Organization ◽  
Data Sharing ◽  
Design Principles ◽  
Technical Support ◽  
World Health ◽  
Political Commitment ◽  
Periodic Review ◽  
Data Governance ◽  
The World ◽  
Health Organization

The COVID-19 pandemic has created enormous challenges for national economies, livelihoods, and public services, including health systems. In January 2021, the World Health Organization proposed an international treaty on pandemics to strengthen the political commitment towards global pandemic preparedness, control, and response. The plan is to present a draft treaty to the World Health Assembly in May 2021. To inform the design of a support system for this treaty, we explored existing mechanisms for periodic reviews conducted either by peers or an external group as well as mechanisms for in-country investigations, conducted with or without country consent. Based on our review, we summarized key design principles requisite for review and investigation mechanisms and explain how these could be applied to pandemics preparedness, control, and response in global health. While there is no single global mechanism that could serve as a model in its own right, there is potential to combine aspects of existing mechanisms. A Universal Periodic Review design based on the model of human rights treaties with independent experts as the authorized monitoring body, if made obligatory, could support compliance with a new pandemic treaty. In terms of on-site investigations, the model by the Committee on Prevention of Torture could lend itself to treaty monitoring and outbreak investigations on short notice or unannounced. These mechanisms need to be put in place in accordance with several core interlinked design principles: compliance; accountability; independence; transparency and data sharing; speed; emphasis on capabilities; and incentives. The World Health Organization can incentivize and complement these efforts. It has an essential role in providing countries with technical support and tools to strengthen emergency preparedness and response capacities, including technical support for creating surveillance structures, integrating non-traditional data sources, creating data governance and data sharing standards, and conducting regular monitoring and assessment of preparedness and response capacities.

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