WHO Healthy Cities

The WHO Healthy Cities Program has been around since the mid-1980s and but is not as well known in the United States as it perhaps should be. The program is focused on “health development through a process of political commitment, institutional change, capacity-building, partnership-based planning and innovative projects” (http://www.euro.who.int/en/what-we-do/health-topics/environment-and-health/urban-health/activities/healthy-cities). Healthy city activities typically focus on fostering collaborations and partnerships to promote health with a refreshing mix of interventions—policies, programs, and plans. Activities that won Healthy Cities Awards in recent years include schools that promote urban health, injury and violence prevention activities, best practices in public toilets, and healthy urban transportation (http://www.alliance-healthycities.com/htmls/awards/index_awards.html).

It’s hard to find exactly how many cities participate but the WHO European office claims that over 1,400 European cities take part in 30 national networks. As the network is global, presumably the overall numbers are much larger. An Alliance for Healthy Cities brings some of these cities together: http://www.alliance-healthycities.com/htmls/about/index_about.html 

The WHO European office has a useful healthy cities checklist that shows the wide range of topics of interest to the program from ecosystem health and public participation to diversity and economic vitality. You can read the whole list at http://www.euro.who.int/en/what-we-do/health-topics/environment-and-health/urban-health/activities/healthy-cities/who-european-healthy-cities-network/what-is-a-healthy-city/healthy-city-checklist. 

Planning for Healthy Places with Health Impact Assessments

A screenshot of the online slide show

A few years back the American Planning Association in association with the National Association of County and City Health Officials created the online course Planning for Healthy Places with Health Impact Assessments at http://professional.captus.com/Planning/hia/default.aspx. Don’t be put off by the initial survey that you have to fill in to get into the site—it’s short and you don’t need to be an APA member to access it! Sponsored by the Centers for Disease control and Prevention the initial course was developed by Rajiv Bhatia, Laura Biazzo, MPH, Division of Nutrition and Physical Activity of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Brian Cole, Andrew Dannenberg, Carrie Fesperman, and Candace Rutt.

With Christine Green from APA and Nisha Bochwey from the University of Virginia I’ve worked to update the program (without changing the voiceover except for one short additional module!)—Christine is the maven of resources and Nisha did a stellar job on quizzes. There are a lot of new examples. The computer generated voice is a bit weird but the content is a good introduction to HIA—and thanks to the CDC it’s free.

Tools: The Pedestrian and Bicycling Survey (PABS)

I’ve recently been involved creating a new survey for measuring transportation behavior, particularly walking and cycling.  The Pedestrian and Bicycling Survey (PABS) is a mail out/mail back survey designed to be an inexpensive means for local governments to learn about nonmotorized transportation use in their communities.

An important component of the design of the PABS was creating a probabilistic sampling approach that would be relatively straightforward to administer and, if desired, could be carried out in house (within municipal agencies). While other sampling approaches—such as snowball sampling across the internet—can achieve a large number of responses, the probability of any person being asked to take the survey is not known making it a challenge to generalize from the sample to the wider population.

Pedestrians in suburban Hong Kong

Documentation includes a report outlining how the survey was developed and the results of reliability (repeatability) sampling. A manual provides step by step guidance about how to use the survey too. The survey is provided at the end of both documents and is available in English and Spanish. Materials are available for download at http://transweb.sjsu.edu/project/ 2907.html (scroll down to find the manual).

Future plans include creating a more modular version so users can mix and match sections to suit the questions they need answered. Updates will be available at http://www.designforhealth.net/health/PABS.html.