The sixth in the series of City Health conferences ‘Empowerment, Engagement and Partnership: participating to develop healthy cities’ is hosted by the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland and organised by Knowledge•Action•Change. The conference will take place in Basel, Switzerland on 13-14 September 2017.
‘Empowerment, Engagement and Partnership: participating to develop healthy cities’ reflects the belief that measures and actions for health promotion and urban development are more effective if the affected populations play an active and co-decisive role in the process of design, development and delivery. Evidence demonstrates that such engagement and participation contributes to sustainable solutions, to a greater identification with urban public space and increased intergenerational communication.
Other benefits from this inclusivity can be seen in reducing inequalities and improving access to resources, both of which contribute to increased individual and community well-being. Measures for this include improved health status, increased life expectancy, a reduction in anti-social behaviours and increased social cohesion.
This approach also lends itself to implementation at neighbourhood, as well as city levels and enables many innovative ideas and practices to ‘road tested’ without wholesale reorganisation and consequent cost to the public purse.
This is an ‘inclusive’ conference, with presenters and participants including NGOs, community projects, advocacy groups, as well as urban and health planners, academics, policy makers and those who deliver services and interventions.
The programme for the conference is designed by a committee comprising representatives of the local hosts, former hosts and other international experts, who lend their expertise to mix and match presentations, to create sessions that cut across issues, professions and disciplines and look at problems and possible solutions in a more ‘horizontal’ and integrated way.
More detailed information and programme of the City Health Conference in Basel can be found here.
