Healthy Places Special Interest Group

At the 2014 Faculty of Public Health annual conference in Manchester, a small group interested in issues of urbanisation, health and place met to establish a Special Interest Group (SIG). This group were keen to focus on building a network of public health practitioners and academics working on understanding and shaping healthy, resilient cities and places. There was a focus on metrics to measure wellbeing and resilience particularly salutogenic outcomes. Identifying and sharing evidence-based responses that have been tried or appear promising was seen as a key role of the SIG. There was particular interest in approaches that build on communities' existing assets and the role of green infrastructure and nature-based interventions in contributing to healthy cities and places.

Identified objectives:

  • Find and engage the wider public health workforce in this discussion
  • Pursue work that helps local authorities etc. collate metrics/outcomes/indicators that measure wellbeing and resilience and salutogenic outcomes (Salutogenic: focused on factors supporting health and wellbeing rather than on causes of disease)
  • Include elected members education
  • Link to best practice (Scotland)/ABCD Europe - training community re public health (38 Degrees) (greenspace John Moores analysis)
  • Include characteristics of the place/green infrastructure
  • Create a vision of healthy and resilient cities/places (integrated with the World Health Organization)
  • Raise awareness of salutogenic indicators
  • Promote responsibilities of individual and their health
  • Work with healthy cities network to raise awareness and communicate health and wellbeing messages and resources:
    * Encourage directors of public health to write annual reports - how and approach
    * Raise awareness and education remit of wider public health workforce - elected members/community members
    * Champion approach across all cities not just healthy cities.

The Healthy Places Special Interest Group is co-chaired by Helen Elsey : h.elsey@leeds.ac.uk and Lynne Kennedy : l.kennedy@chester.ac.uk and reports to the Faculty's Health Improvement Committee

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