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.

Co-Chairs: Helen Elsey ( h.elsey@leeds.ac.uk) and Lynne Kennedy ( l.kennedy@chester.ac.uk)