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Background information
The WHO Healthy Cities programme
The World Health Organisation Healthy Cities programme is concerned with everything that can affect health including health care, social care, employment, housing, transport, crime, leisure, education and poverty. It has an overarching aim of health equality in all policies.
It is organised in five-year phases. The fifth phase runs from January 2009 to December 2013 and has three key priorities:
- a caring and supportive environment (focusing on issues relating to employment, recession, and moving into or out of work)
- healthy living (focusing on active living, mental health and well-being)
- healthy urban environment and design (focusing on urban planning and transport, including workplace travel plans and encouraging walking and cycling)
Brighton and Hove was formally approved as a WHO Phase 5 Healthy City in February 2010.
Brighton and Hove's involvement
In Brighton and Hove in Phase 5 we are focusing on:
-Healthy workplaces
-Active living
-Healthy urban environments
Background
Brighton and Hove joined the WHO European Healthy Cities Network in 2004 as another way of supporting efforts to promote health, treat ill health and reduce inequalities.
City organisations including the NHS, local government, businesses, and the community and voluntary sectors work together as the Brighton and Hove Healthy City Partnership to develop local projects.
Between 2004 and December 2008 the Partnership worked on projects linked to WHO Phase 4 of the Healthy City Programme.
Successes included:
- the Active for Life website, Active Living strategy and sports strategy
- promoting health at school;
- encouraging local businesses to support staff sports activities;
- creating green gyms, greenways, and safe cycling and walking routes;
- more support for carers;
- making sure planning decisions take account of their impact on health; and
- improving air quality by reducing traffic on two main roads into central Brighton.
Papers about local Phase 4 projects are in the key documents section.
This section also contains an independent evaluation report on Phase 4 activities and the Healthy City Partnership.
You can see more about our plans for this year in the current programme section of this site and the Brighton and Hove Sustainable Community Strategy.
Health and inequality in Brighton and Hove
Brighton and Hove’s health profile reflects the city’s social and economic diversity which sees areas of great prosperity alongside areas of significant deprivation.
Men in the most deprived areas can expect to live 10 years less than those in the least deprived areas. Women can expect to live 6 years less.
The city has high rates of HIV and sexually transmitted diseases, mental health issues (particularly alcohol and drug misuse), and teenage pregnancy.
Although death rates from heart disease and stroke have fallen, lifestyle and deprivation-related factors still cause too many preventable deaths from heart disease, cancer and respiratory disease.
NHS Brighton and Hove has committed itself to:
- increasing life expectancy for the most socially disadvantaged communities; and
- reducing the ‘health gap’ between the most and least deprived areas of the city.
There is more information about local health issues and how they are being tackled in the:
