| Project Detail |
Rapid and unplanned urbanization leads to poor health. Improving urban governance for health and well-being, and building resilient cities helps to address these challenges. With a strong focus on civic engagement and experience in participative urban development, Switzerland is playing a key role in catalysing action to create healthier urban environments in low- and middle-income countries. 25 mil-lion people in six cities will benefit from improved decision-making processes. Urban environments influence health in a variety of ways through the dynamic interactions of the individual with the policy, physical, social, cultural and economic environment. These en-vironments are shaped by the decisions of actors with different levels of influence, interests and priorities. Because health is created outside the health sector, multisectoral action is needed. Meaningful community involvement in governance processes is also essential, as it builds trust, promotes transparency and holds government institutions accountable. The process also in-creases community ownership of interventions and strengthens individual, community and population resilience, which is essen-tial in times of crises. The inability of current urban infrastructure to cope with increas-ing demand for public services leads to adverse health and so-cial impacts. Shortcomings in strategic urban planning and in addressing the social determinants of health, such as employ-ment, income and housing, often result in social inequalities, poverty, crime, environmental hazards and unmet needs of vul-nerable populations, significantly affecting their health and well-being. Initiated by Switzerland and building on good practice in the World Health Organization European Region, the global pro-ject aims to promote good urban governance for health through community empowerment and the capacity building for city au-thorities and leaders, multisectoral action, and participatory ur-ban planning with active community involvement. The first phase benefited from an additional credit for the COVID-19 response in Latin America. The aim of this second phase is to consolidate the results achieved in the first phase in Latin America and to focus more on Africa for the next phase. Objectives To strengthen participatory, multi-sectoral and multi-level urban gov-ernance to address inequities and improve health and well-being in six cities (Bogota, Douala, Khulna, Mexico City, Pasig, and Tunis) in low- and middle-income countries. At the city level, to put people’s health and well-being at the centre of urban decision-making; to involve and empower individuals and com-munities in decision-making; and to enable sectors to positively influ-ence health determinants and pro-mote good multi-level governance. Enable city authorities to engage in more peer-to-peer exchange with other cities and to feed their experi-ences into national, regional and in-ternational processes related to im-proved urban governance for health and well-being, which can serve as a model for other cities. |
