Question

Describe a health related service that could promote the health of a community

Answer 1

Healthy Cities/Healthy Communities is a theoretical framework for a participatory process by which citizens can create healthy communities. In 1985, at a conference in Toronto organized by Trevor Hancock, Len Duhl spoke about his long-held conviction that health issues could only be effectively addressed through an inclusive, community-wide approach. Ilona Kickbusch, a World Health Organization (WHO) official who was attending the conference, brought the idea back to her superiors at the WHO European office in Copenhagen. Within a matter of weeks, Duhl and Hancock had been hired as consultants to help WHO and Kickbusch start a Healthy Cities movement in Europe. A year later, the attendees of a WHO conference in Ottawa drafted the Ottawa Charter, the “Constitution” of Healthy Cities/Healthy Communities. In the years since that first conference, the concept has spread to hundreds of large and medium-sized cities on all continents, and has also been used in smaller municipalities and rural communities in both the developing and the developed world. It is now the standard way in which the WHO addresses community health, and it encompasses other community issues as well.