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Healthy Cities in Europe: Structured, Unique, and Thoughtful

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Healthy Cities

Abstract

Europe has played an important role in the global development of Healthy Cities. The Regional WHO Bureau in Copenhagen was the first to implement the Healthy Cities concept, with partners from North America and through an initial network of cities in Europe. The network was then consolidated and expanded through several successive 5-year phases. Facilitating the creation of national WHO Healthy Cities networks ensured further diffusion of the idea. This relatively formal structure has ensured that Healthy Cities is the only programme where WHO liaises not with Member States ministers but with the mayors of cities or conurbations. Working in coordinated by WHO networks has favoured the exchange of information between partners as well as the pursuit of common goals. It has also allowed the production of structured and innovative evaluations, impossible to produce by each participating city in isolation. The European model is therefore a useful way of implementing the Healthy Cities concept. It ensures a certain degree of homogeneity, which does not prevent novel concepts from emerging, such as the Green Fork label, used in catering.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Now represented by the health coordinators as part of the local health contract.

  2. 2.

    http://metropole.rennes.fr/politiques-publiques/elus-institution-citoyennete/l-agenda-21/

  3. 3.

    See also the follow up of this project in the partnership “Réseau Bretagne Urbanisme Santé” at http://rbus-eis.org

  4. 4.

    http://www.villes-sante.com/

  5. 5.

    http://www.s2d-ccvs.fr/

  6. 6.

    Angers, Bordeaux, Brest, Brive-la-Gaillarde, Cherbourg-Octeville, La Rochelle, La Roche-sur-Yon, Lorient, La Rochelle, La Roche-sur-Yon, Lormont, Nantes, Quimper, Rennes, Saint-Brieuc.

  7. 7.

    Examples are the international Santexpo Health-Environment in the city (1992), the National Health Forum for the Environment and Chemicals, responsibilities and responses of local authorities (2007), the annual business meeting of WHO European Healthy Cities Network (2007), the regional urban planning days, for environment and health, acting for health and sustainable development, tools for action (2011), etc.

  8. 8.

    Around 33 % of the adult population in Switzerland were smokers in 1992 (Source: Swiss Health Survey), but most restaurant managers believed that smokers formed a majority of the population and were unconvinced by officially certified data.

  9. 9.

    This was not true for many restaurants in Geneva; according to an ad hoc study by the Geneva Health Department, nutritional knowledge among restaurant manager and cooks was as low as in the general population at that time.

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Wilding, H. et al. (2017). Healthy Cities in Europe: Structured, Unique, and Thoughtful. In: de Leeuw, E., Simos, J. (eds) Healthy Cities. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-6694-3_10

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