The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA

Abstract #38934

Evelyne de Leeuw, MPH, PhD and Thomas Skovgaard, MA. Department of Health Promotion Research, University of Southern Denmark, Niels Bohrs Vej 6, 6700 Esbjerg, Denmark, +45 6550 4115, edeleeuw@health.sdu.dk

Since 1986 WHO has been running its ‘Healthy Cities’ programme. Although only the European Region of WHO has formal membership criteria, there are some 10,000 cities worldwide that claim to pursue ‘Healthy City’ objectives. Their approaches are concordant with, e.g., the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements UNCHS (Habitat) ‘Inclusive City’ declaration or APEC ‘Healthy Futures for Megacities’ strategies. Current European principles include a commitment to sustainable development, equity in health, policy development, and operational features depend on community action, local policy networking and intersectoral action. The programme has been running for three consecutive five-year periods and will enter its fourth phase in 2003. Earlier phases were characterised by ‘models of good practice’ and some benchmarking efforts, but monitoring, accountability, health reporting and impact assessment have been crucial elements of the third phase (see Skovgaard & De Leeuw). This presentation will include the following:

- history of urban health (1850-1920 sanitary period; 1920-1950 therapeutic period; 1950-1980 urban planning period; 1980- health development period); - the conceptual foundations of Healthy Cities (why emphasise human development rather than primary (medical) care development); - examples of Healthy City policies and activities from selected Healthy Cities around the world (Rotterdam, Kuressaare, Kuching, Haikou, Bangkok); - stakeholder-related methodological and theoretical challenges in monitoring and evaluation of Healthy City practice; - a review of the limited number of evaluation efforts looking at the Healthy City in its synergistic totality; and - findings and future developments related to community action and social entrepreneurship aiming at policy development and evidence-based urban health policies.

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