Today I attended the first-ever Healthy People, Healthy City conference, sponsored by the City of Vancouver in partnership with Vancouver Coastal Health.
The Healthy City Program is an initiative of the World Health Organization (WHO) that defines a healthy city as "one that is continually creating and improving those physical and social environments and expanding those community resources which enable people to mutually support each other in performing all the functions of life and in developing to their maximum potential."
The primary focus of the gathering was to gain a better understanding of the relationship between urban environments and the health of its citizens. Mayor Gregor Robertson opened the conference. Dr. Patricia Daly, Chef Medical Health Officer for Vancouver Coastal Health, spoke, and City Councillors Adriane Carr and Dr. Kerry Jang were in attendance.
I am in full agreement with Andre Picard, the Globe & Mail’s public health reporter and acclaimed author who, in his keynote address, said that we all need to lead a healthy lifestyle and be responsible for our own health and not merely insist that the healthcare system make us healthy. This requires repositioning the healthcare system from “sickness-centered” to “health-centered”. In a word, prevention. This means embracing risk-taking and innovation, and not accepting mediocrity as a Canadian value.
The numerous presentations dealt with socioeconomic issues affecting the health of Vancouverites, including income inequality, confusing equality with equity, revising “universal” policies, and using a targeted approach when appropriate and justified. We also need to develop a new social contract that supports healthy people living in a healthy city, where spending on safe sidewalks and living in affordable housing becomes a priority. This requires us to treat city planners and engineers as public health officials and adopt ideas such as bikeways and transit, backyard food gardens, safe public places, and embracing harm-reduction strategies.
Change is up to us at a community level, and sometimes at a Provincial or Federal level, but it is still up to us. It is fine to “make people uncomfortable” when challenging them to do better. According to Dr. Penny Ballem, Vancouver's City Manager, “We all have to do better.”
For more information on Vancouver’s Healthy City strategy, visit http://vancouver.ca/healthycity/
This posting has been excerpted with permission from the Patient Voices Network. The opinions are those of the author, Ms. Wadolna, and do not necessarily reflect those of the Seniors Advisory Committee.
