HEALTHY CITY
OBJECTIVES
To understand:
Concept
Objectives
History
Programme
of healthy cities
LECTURE OUTLINE:
Healthy City:
•Rapid growth of population and its concentration in cities around the world constitute a crucial element effecting the long term outlook for humanity.
Cities of 21st century:
Cities of 19th century:
•Until the last half of 19th century, cities never attracted more than ten percent of global population despite being centers of civilization and economic activity.
Population Distribution:
•In 1970, 35% of all people lived in urban areas, and now, by the year 2010 that percentage has exceeded 50%.
World Population in 2010:
•The global population is projected to reach 7 billion in year 2010, with most growth coming from developing and/or poor regions including Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Caribbean, according to the Population Reference Bureau.
•A co-author of the PRB's 2009 World Population Data Sheet said that nearly 90 percent of today's 1.2 billion young people are living in developing nations, and eight in 10 live either in Africa or Asia.
•Most growth in the developed world will come from the U.S. and Canada, with equal parts of that coming from immigration and births minus deaths.
•India is poised to overtake China as the world's most populated country by 2050.
•Cities have become synonymous with growth and thus subject to increasing crisis.
•Especially in developing countries, main areas of concern are :
Poverty.
Environmental degradation.
Lack of urban services.
Degeneration of existing infrastructure.
Housing/ adequate shelter.
Urban Squatter Settlements:
Physical Environment:
Physical, chemical and biological systems
Housing, streets, and physical layouts
Geography, landscape and climate
Architecture
Ecological footprint
Urban Environmental Systems:
Physical system
-Temperature
-Sun intensity
-Electromagnetic radiation
-Radionuclide radiation
-Dust
Chemical system
-Chemicals in air
- Chemicals in soil
-Chemicals in water
- Chemicals in food
Biological system
-Plants
-Birds
-Domestic animals
-Microorganisms (bacteria, virus, fungi, algae, etc)
Social Environment:
- Culture, social and religious norms
- Social structure, cohesion and participation
- Traditional and formal social support networks
- Economic opportunities, system and structure
- Participation in economy and decision making
Behaviour:
- Healthy lifestyle
- Social mindedness and consciousness
- Self esteem, happiness
- Aspiration, ambition, dynamism
Living in a city: health and quality of life:
People live longer and healthier lives if they:
-Breath clean air and drink safe water
-Live in safe and comfortable housing
-Have health supporting behaviour and easy access to health care services
-Have meaningful jobs and income.
-Have security
-Have friends and feel they belong to their community
-Can make choices for their lives.
-Have a peaceful home
-Have trees, plants and feel they relate to the architecture.
Background:
The international Healthy Cities movement was first conceived in Canada in 1984 as a result of the Healthy Toronto 2000: Beyond Health Care symposium, and was launched in Europe in 1986 by the World Health Organization (WHO).The movement has since spread across the globe and now involves more than 3,000 municipalities.
Objective
Improve the healthand qualityof life of the citizens
Healthy cities in EMR:
•The initiative started in 1989
•First healthy cities workshop in Cairo
•Iran was one of the first countries to support the concept and has supported the programme in the Region.
Healthy City Concept:
Water supply
Sanitation
Health services
Social services
Income generation
Economic development
The Aims Of Healthy Cities Initiative:
-Improve health and environmental services
-Make people partners
-Strengthen social support network
-Stimulate economic development dialogue
-Put health at Center of city social and political agenda.
Healthy cities projects
•They assist in creating linkages between concerned city and national authorities, facilitating community participation, raising awareness and fostering partnership
•They make the implementation of existing projects more efficient and better.
Strategies/approaches:
•Develops strong promotional process
•Promotes the needs of women and children.
•Promote care of elderly
•Strengthens health and environment institutions.
•Encourages/establishes networking.
•Mobilize NGOs, Universities, etc...
•Mobilize resources.
•Creates links between related health programmes.
Objective of Healthy Cities’ Action in EMR:
The basic objective of “healthy cities” action in the EMR is to improve the health of urban dwellers, especially in the urban poor areas, giving priority to the up-grading of environmental health services and conditions in the cities and facilitating networking.
Healthy Cities Structure
Characteristics and responsibilities of the advocacy group:
•To have leadership quality and genuine interest for health and caring for their city.
•To contact; community groups, religious organizations, public health and environmental departments, municipality departments, institutions dealing with urban, social and public policies, agencies and individuals concerned with urban studies, private sectors, civil society, NGOs public figures, sport personalities, media, professional associations, women and youth organization, etc.
•To promote the HC concept and build wide public support.
Responsibilities of HC Committee:
•To develop HC work plans projects and activities.
•To ensure extending outreach to lowest community level for priority health programmes.
•Encouraging community groups to be involved.
•To facilitate the function of the “city health forum”
•Mobilize people and resources for priority projects.
•Prepare “city health profile”.
•To collect information and facilitate networking
Healthy City Forum
Objectives
-To promote and make health more visible
-To facilitate health partners to come together
-To facilitate preparation ofcity health profile
-To facilitate identification ofhealth priorities and goals
-To facilitate developing city health plan
-To involve youthpromote, their aspirations and needs
-To mobilizemedia and all other resources for health
Examples:
City Health Forum
Green Industries
Road TrafficAccident
No Smoking
Nutrition
PCVD