scholarly journals From healthy city projects to healthy cities

1999 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edmundo Werna ◽  
Trudy Harpham ◽  
Ilona Blue ◽  
Greg Goldstein
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Nuan-Ching Huang ◽  
Hsien-Wen Kuo ◽  
Te-Jen Hung ◽  
Susan Hu

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.


Author(s):  
Munjae Lee ◽  
Sewon Park ◽  
Kichan Yoon

Healthy cities continuously attempt to improve residents’ health. Health is affected by psychological factors, such as happiness and emotions. Therefore, this study investigates the effects of healthy city program performance on individuals’ emotions, as well as the correlation between healthy city program performance and emotions using personal happiness index as a parameter. We conducted a questionnaire survey of residents in areas implementing healthy city projects. A total of 596 responses were obtained. We used structural equations to analyze the relationship of structural influences. Results showed that healthy city program performance had significant static effects on emotion. This observation shows that healthy city programs decrease local residents’ negative emotions, such as stress and depression. Therefore, healthy city programs stabilize residents’ emotions by increasing health friendliness. To improve the performance of healthy city programs, it is necessary to mitigate health risk factors and positively affect individuals’ emotions.


2019 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Larisa Sergeevna Koval'zhina

This article presents the analysis of sociological discourse on the fundamental aspects of the “Healthy Cities” project; discusses the peculiarities of the World Health Organization “Healthy Cities” strategy; technologies of formation of the created on its basis programs on preservation of health of the urban population. The importance of the political and legislative factor impacting people’s health and inequality with regards to health maintenance is revealed. The subject of this research is the projects aimed at preservation of health of the city dwellers and overcoming of inequality related to health, developed on the basis of the World Health Organization “Healthy Cities” concept. The author applies the theoretical-methodological analysis, secondary data analysis of the sociological study “Moscow is a Healthy City” (Russian Public Opinion Research Center, 2018)’; as well as survey results, conducted by the author in 2013 and 2017 among the schoolers, university students, and their parents of Tyumen Region, on the questions of health maintenance. The main conclusion consists in consideration of the socio-biological gradient in formation of inequalities with regards to health among the representatives of different social groups. The author emphasizes the effectiveness of the “Healthy Cities” project in Moscow; as well as discusses the strategies on preservation of health among the population of Tyumen Region. The results of the conducted sociological study on living a healthy lifestyle demonstrate an accurate correlation between the increasing level of education and the number of those adopting a healthy lifestyle. Such project is relevant for not only large cities, but also rural areas with certain adjustment to the local specificities and tasks.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chengcheng Liu

In the past 40 years, China has experienced the largest and fastest urbanization development in the world. The infrastructure, urban environment and medical services of cities have been improved significantly. The health impacts are manifested in the decrease of the incidence of infectious diseases and the significant increase of the life span of residents. However, the development of urbanization in China has also created many problems, including the increasing pollution of urban environment such as air, water and soil, the disorderly spread of urban construction land, the fragmentation of natural ecological environment, dense population, traffic congestion and so on. With the process of urbanization and motorization, the lifestyle of urban population has changed, and the disease spectrum and the sequence of death causes have changed. Chronic noncommunicable diseases have replaced acute infectious diseases and become the primary threat to urban public health. According to the data published by the famous medical journal The LANCET on China's health care, the economic losses caused by five major non-communicable diseases (ischemic heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, diabetes mellitus, breast cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) will reach US$23 trillion between 2012 and 2030, more than twice the total GDP of China in 2015 (US$11.7 trillion). Therefore, China proposes to implement the strategy of "Healthy China" and develop the policy of "integrating health into ten thousand strategies". Integrate health into the whole process of urban and rural planning, construction and governance to form a healthy, equitable and accessible production and living environment. China is building healthy cities through the above four strategies. The main strategies from national system design to local planning are as follows. First of all, the top-level design of the country. There are two main points: one point, the formulation of the Healthy China 2030 Plan determines the first batch of 38 pilot healthy cities and practices the strategy of healthy city planning; the other point, formulate and implement the national health city policy and issue the National Healthy City. The evaluation index system evaluates the development of local work from five aspects: environment, society, service, crowd and culture, finds out the weak links in the work in time, and constantly improves the quality of healthy city construction. Secondly, the reform of territorial spatial planning. In order to adapt to the rapid development of urbanization, China urban plan promote the reform of spatial planning system, change the layout of spatial planning into the fine management of space, and promote the sustainable development of cities. To delimit the boundary line of urban development and the red line of urban ecological protection and limit the disorderly spread of urban development as the requirements of space control. The bottom line of urban environmental quality and resource utilization are studied as capacity control and environmental access requirements. The grid management of urban built environment and natural environment is carried out, and the hierarchical and classified management unit is determined. Thirdly, the practice of special planning for local health and medical distribution facilities. In order to embody the equity of health services, including health equity, equity of health services utilization and equity of health resources distribution. For the elderly population, vulnerable groups and patients with chronic diseases, the layout of community health care facilities and intelligent medical treatment are combined to facilitate the "last kilometer" service of health care. Finally, urban repair and ecological restoration design are carried out. From the perspective of people-oriented, on the basis of studying the comfortable construction of urban physical environment, human behavior and the characteristics of human needs, to tackle "urban diseases" and make up for "urban shortboard". China is building healthy cities through the above four strategies. Committed to the realization of a constantly developing natural and social environment, and can continue to expand social resources, so that people can enjoy life and give full play to their potential to support each other in the city.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 52
Author(s):  
Jingyuan Chen ◽  
Yuqi Bai ◽  
Pei Zhang ◽  
Jingyuan Qiu ◽  
Yichun Hu ◽  
...  

Whether the supplies of health services and related facilities meet the demand is a critical issue when developing healthy cities. The importance of health services and related facilities in public health promotion has been adequately proved. However, since the community population and resource data are usually available at the scale of an administrative region; it is very difficult to perform further fine-scaled spatial distribution equilibrium evaluation studies. Such kinds of activities are highly expected for precise urban planning and management. Yichang is located in Hubei province, the central part of China, along the Yangzi River. It is leading both of China’s smart cities demonstration project and China’s healthy cities pilot project. Yichang has defined 1271 community grids for urban management and service, where each grid consists of 200 households generally with its population distribution data routinely updated. The research set the 15-min walking distances of the residents as impedance factors, and the numbers and the types of health service resources as attractiveness factors for accessibility evaluation. The resource ratio, richness and per capita number of various health service resources that can be reached within 15 min from the community grid building is used as spatial distribution equilibrium evaluation indicators. The entropy weight method is used to assign the indicator weight value. The obtained fine-scale evaluation results were analyzed. In this way, a community grid-scale spatial distribution equilibrium evaluation of health service resources in Yichang was performed. The proposed research could be of value for rapid and precise evaluation of spatial distribution equilibrium evaluation of a variety of healthy city resources, to support healthy city planning and management.


2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bimala Sharma ◽  
EW Nam

 Introduction: One of the goals of sustainable development is to make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. The healthy city approach is becoming increasingly important in addressing a large number of urban health problems and promoting healthy lifestyles in city dwellers.Objectives: We performed a case study of the healthy city project in Wonju, South Korea to find out its characteristics and approaches, and to explore its relevance to the cities in Nepal.Methods: We conducted a case study of the healthy city Wonju project by reviewing relevant published articles and web pages of the city (http://healthycity.wonju.go.kr), alliance for healthy cities, Korean statistical information service and World Health Organization. We also reviewed articles and documents related to healthy cities in South-East Asian countries and Nepal.Results: The healthy city Wonju project, started in 2004, executed its five-year plan between 2006 and 2010, and is currently running with its 10 year long-term plan (2011- 2020). For its success, Wonju City has been awarded six times by WHO. Recently, Wonju city organized the seventh global conference of the AFHC in August, 2016 in Wonju with the main theme of “our cities, our health, our future”. Key features of the healthy city Wonju project included: Strong political commitment of local government, financing the healthy city initiative with tobacco consumption tax, partnerships with universities, well organized healthy city teams under city administration, coordination with national and regional healthy cities alliance, community participation, and involvement in research for evidence-based planning and evaluation. Nepal, one of the fast urbanizing countries in South-East Asia faces large number of urban health problems.Conclusions: Though numbers of cities and city dwellers are increasing rapidly, Nepal lacks healthy city projects and networking. The approaches of healthy city Wonju might be useful for developing countries such as Nepal to initiate and develop healthy cities projects in a sustainable way. Journal of Gandaki Medical CollegeVol. 10, No. 1, 2017, page: 34-42


Author(s):  
Jun Yang ◽  
Xiangyu Luo ◽  
Yixiong Xiao ◽  
Shaoqing Shen ◽  
Mo Su ◽  
...  

Various indicator systems have been developed to monitor and assess healthy cities. However, few of them contain spatially explicit indicators. In this study, we assessed four health determinants in Shenzhen, China, using both indicators commonly included in healthy city indicator systems and spatially explicit indicators. The spatially explicit indicators were developed using detailed building information or social media data. Our results showed that the evaluation results of districts and sub-districts in Shenzhen based on spatially explicit indicators could be positively, negatively, or not associated with the evaluation results based on conventional indicators. The discrepancy may be caused by the different information contained in the two types of indicators. The spatially explicit indicators measure the quantity of the determinants and the spatial accessibility of these determinants, while the conventional indicators only measure the quantity. Our results also showed that social media data have great potential to represent the high-resolution population distribution required to estimate spatially explicit indicators. Based on our findings, we recommend that spatially explicit indicators should be included in healthy city indicator systems to allow for a more comprehensive assessment of healthy cities.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jing Huang ◽  
Hong Xu ◽  
Rui Ding

Health is not only derived from a good personal lifestyle, but also from a good external social environment. This article summarizes relevant researches on healthy cities and slow-moving systems at home and abroad, and discusses how to understand the environmental space of historical locations from a human perspective, and use the concept of healthy cities to study the use of various spaces. Taking the Tanhualin Historic District in Wuhan as an example, this paper analyzes the current situation of the Tanhualin Historic District and the existing problems in the transportation system, and proposes a new design model for the slow system design of Tanhualin from the perspective of a healthy city.


Author(s):  
Nazar Mohamed ◽  
Samar Elfeky ◽  
Mohamed Khashoggi ◽  
Sarah Ibrahim ◽  
Amaal Aliahia ◽  
...  

Background: The healthy city concept has been widely accepted globally and has been established in all six World Health Organization (WHO) Regions. Community involvement, empowerment, and leadership are embedded core principles in the Healthy Cities initiative and pillars to achieve the health and health-related sustainable development goals. This article aimed to present the findings of the recent evaluation of eleven healthy cities in the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR). Methods: The descriptive comparative evaluation was based on the WHO/EMRO healthy city 80 indicators. It included eleven cities (Al-Dariyah, Jalajil, Al-Jamoum, Unaiza, Riyadh Alkhubra, Sharoura, Al-Madina, Al-Taif, and Al-Mundaq in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; Al-Yarmouk in Kuwait, and Manama in Bahrain). Results: The findings revealed that eleven cities were peculiar in demonstrating community involvement, empowerment, and leadership in real terms. All had well mechanisms for communities to voice themselves and participate in decision-making, assessing the needs, setting priorities, planning better for their cities, and monitoring. The community engagement was based on voluntarism with a high sense of loyalty. It has been well demonstrated in community organizations like women and youth groups, health volunteers, community-based organizations, and others. Conclusion: Although community participation and empowerment remain at the heart of the healthy cities initiative, to be meaningful, the government-related sectors must foresee this as an integral part of long-term strategic development. Moreover, a paradigm shift towards a more integrated approach to promote health, well-being, accelerate the achievement of health-related sustainable development goals, and reduce health inequities in urban settings requires multi-stakeholder collaboration, including public, private, and community civil societies.


2020 ◽  
Vol 194 ◽  
pp. 05025
Author(s):  
Qiutong Chen ◽  
Ziliu Qin ◽  
Xiang Ji ◽  
Shuang Ming ◽  
Qin Du

In the first half-year of 2020, the COVID-19 (Coronavirus disease 2019) outbreak spread rapidly around the world. Under the impact of the crisis of Public Health Emergency, the development of healthy cities and people’s lives must be experienced a tough test, and it will trigger the thinking and practice of urban construction as well. Taking the construction of Nanning greenway system as an example, and trying to discuss the route and the significance of healthy cities construction by greenway supporting, we came up with suggestions for greenway construction by the orientation of the concept healthy city.


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