The Effective Global Health Promotion Tool of the Present Decade-Healthy Cities Approach

Author(s): Amit Amar Soren and Dr. Shaweta Singh

Abstract:

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development targets health as vital for the future of our world. The purpose of the thirteenth general programme of work 2019-2023 (GPW 13) is to seize this opportunity with a commitment to achieve Goal 3, which calls on all stakeholders to “Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages,” within and across national boundaries and this has never been more relevant in the present scenario. In reference to the above context, a healthy city is the city that continually creates and improves its physical and social environments and expands the community resources that enable people to mutually support each other in performing all the functions of life and developing to their maximum potential. A Healthy Cities approach incorporates the role of political leadership and participatory governance which can transform the health and health equity and mitigate the impacts of environmental degradation, climate change, aging, migration, growing inequality and social isolation in the urban settings. The concept of Healthy Cities was inspired and supported by the WHO European Health for All strategy and the Health 21 targets. This research paper aims at addressing the established and emerging public health challenges of the 21st century at environmental, organizational, interpersonal and individual levels, discourse of eleven qualities of a Healthy Cities proposed by WHO, analysis of 1963 Healthy Cities Movement, Canadian Health Policy (the Lalonde Report), Vancouver’s Healthy City Strategy, Cape Verde Healthy Cities/Islands, the concept of Walkable Cities, analysis of Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion and its principles as well as the Shanghai Consensus on Healthy Cities and articulation of social determinants of health (SDH) to sensitize the issue that Healthy Cities approach is the need of the present hour because major health inequalities persist across the world which is higher amongst the poorest and excluded groups across countries, within countries and most starkly within cities. The poor and marginalized are more likely to live and work in environments that are harmful and have less access to services and amenities. A Healthy Cities approach can uniquely address this and other injustices as well.

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