Healthy cities

A healthy city is one that is continually creating, expanding and improving those physical and social environments and community resources that enable people to mutually support each other in performing all the functions of life and in developing to their maximum potential.

A healthy city is not necessarily one that has achieved a particular health status. It is a city that puts health high on the political and social agenda and builds a strong movement for public health at the local level with health equity at its centre. The healthy cities approach recognises the need to work in collaboration across public, private, voluntary and community sector organisations. This way of working prioritises policies that: create co-benefits between health and well-being and other city policies; support social inclusion by harnessing the knowledge, skills and priorities of cities’ diverse populations through strong community engagement; create healthy built and natural environments; and re-orient health and social services to optimise fair access, placing people and communities at the centre.

The WHO Healthy Cities programme is a long-term development initiative that seeks to place health and health equity on the agenda of cities around the world, and to build a constituency of support for public health at the local level. In the various WHO regions, and through dedicated networks of cities, healthy cities take on very different priorities and approaches within the overall concept described above.

As defined in the World Health Organisation "Health Promotion Glossary of Terms 2021"

Health promotion is defined by WHO as being the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve their health. Health promotion represents a comprehensive social and political process. It not only embraces actions directed at strengthening the skills and capabilities of individuals, but also action directed towards changing social, environmental and economic determinants of health so as to optimise their positive impact on public and personal health. Health promotion is the process of enabling people, individually and collectively, to increase control over the determinants of health and thereby improve their health.

The Ottawa Charter identifies three basic strategies for health promotion. These are advocacy for health to create the essential conditions for health indicated above; enabling all people to achieve their full health potential; and mediating between the different interests in society in the pursuit of health. The Ottawa Charter identified five priority action areas: to build healthy public policy; create supportive environments for health; strengthen community action for health; develop personal skills; and re-orient health services.

These action areas remain vitally important in health promotion, and the underlying concepts have continued to evolve. Some of these actions – such as re-orienting health services and community action for health – remain but are represented with updated definitions. Others remain in the main body of the glossary but have evolved into different terms. For example, the concept of healthy public policy remains independently valid, but is now included within the contemporary concept of health in all policies. Similarly, developing personal skills is incorporated into definitions of skills for health and health literacy.

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[edit] External links

Healthy cities: effective approach to a rapidly changing world. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2020 (https://apps. who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/331946/9789240004825-eng.pdf, accessed 8 July 2021).

Shanghai Declaration on promoting health in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2017 (https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/WHO-NMH-PND-17.5, accessed 8 July 2021).

What is a healthy city? Copenhagen: World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe; (https://www.euro.who. int/en/health-topics/environment-and-health/urban-health/who-european-healthy-cities-network/what-is-a-healthy-city accessed 8 July 2021)