HEALTHY VALLEY 2000

WHAT IS A HEALTHY CITY OR HEALTHY COMMUNITY?

A Healthy City or Community is one in which its citizens, in all their various roles, have joined forces to pursue change. No matter who initiates the Healthy City/Healthy Community process, the initiator brings all other community sectors into the initiative.

Health in this context is defined broadly to include the full range of quality of life issues. According to the World Health Organization, a "Healthy City or Community" is working to become clean and safe, with a physical environment and ecosystem that is sustainable. The Healthy City/Community strives to provide a thriving economy, quality education system, opportunities for individual and industrial growth, and adequate provision for the public health, medical care, and other essential needs of its population. A community can be defined as a city, region, county, neighborhood or a defined population.

In addition, a Healthy Community demonstrates an element of interconnectedness. When a community undertakes a Healthy Communities project, a reorientation occurs linking public, private, and nonprofit sectors to adress the underlying causes of a poor quality of life and health. Healthy Community participants represent the gamut of interests and roles that make a community work.

Healthy City and Community project participants recognize the power of localities to make significant positive changes in the health and quality of life of their citizens. The movement is based on a philosophy that places emphasis on the process of promoting change as well as the ultimate outcomes of the process. In Healthy City and Healthy Community projects, process and outcomes are inextricably linked. As a result, there can be no single model for a city, community or a project. Each community is unique in the problems it faces and in the resources, cultures, infrastructures, and approaches it takes to respond to those problems.

Healthy City and Community projects:

• take on a broad view of health, focusing on well-being and quality of life,
• include all sectors of the community in identifying priorities and developing and implementing plans,
• recognize that structural change at the local level is necessary for real improvement in community health and well-being

By including all sectors, a Healthy City or Community project creates the possibility of comprehensive solutions to the underlying causes of a poor quality of life and health. Effective solutions are holistic and link citizen, environmental, economic, physical, and design factors to build healthier communities

The Healthy Cities/Healthy Communities movement is made up of hundreds of project, each taking a locally determined path. Each project is a locally directed and controlled initiative to improve well-being and quality of life. The projects that make up the movement share common aspects, but each project is independent, creating their own model and approaches and selectively choosing examples and models from other projects that best suit their individual needs and goals. The local coordinating structure of each project make all decisions. While there are numerous resources availabe to assist individual projects, there is no central authority and no central funding mechanism. In the United States, Healthy City and Community projects are typically funded through private business, local and national foundations, state and local government, and Federal block grants.

*Credit to the U.S. Public Health Service, Department of Health and Human Services, Matthew Guidry and Ashley Coffield for much of the information included.

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