Healthy Cities

Dear Colleagues,

Healthy Cities (HC) projects, proposed by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1986, are the best-known of the settings-based approaches to health promotion for citizens living in cities. These projects are engaged by local governments for creating healthy populations, healthy environments and a healthy society through a process of commitment to health, political decision-making, intersectoral action, community participation, innovation and public health policy. Over 5000 cities and communities have implemented HC projects worldwide, since their inception. Based on the reference from the WHO ‘Health 2020’ strategy, HCs were encouraged to recognize their own efforts toward integrating health in all policies through a supporting team from private sectors, academia and NGO members. Knowing this, each HC should organize an HC committee and set achievable indicators to allow action plans to move forward gradually. HC indicator data should improve estimates, allowing for diagnoses of the overall needs of citizens and illuminate developing trends, thereby allowing the program to move forward appropriately, in both policy settings and in problem solving. Consequently, the indicators allow for management and improvement of the plan’s policies, creating a dynamic system within the plan. Combined understanding of citizen needs, the setup of indicators, the execution of the plan itself, and guidance of assessments lead to a standardized, rolling plan in the form of Plan, Do, Check and Action (PDCA).  Although various cities around the world have been implemented in the HC program for a brief period of time, empirical-based evidence was determined by a whole-hearted effort from the international society. It is needed to witness the effectiveness or benefits through HC programs to demonstrate to solve citizens’ needs to incrementally upgrade their health status and quality of life.  

Prof. Dr. Hsien-Wen Kuo
Guest Editor

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