YEARBOOK 2000 - Commitment to developing a shared vision for the city with a health plan and work on specific themes

Questions related to the preparation and implementation of local activities were meant to explore the commitment to the elaboration of a common vision for the future. The information gained in this respect has been grouped into categories, and it is through the summary of the results that we present here the kind of activities and programmes that were implemented in the Healthy Cities member towns during the year 2000. The actions operating as on-going parts of the local projects are treated separately from the new ones that were introduced in year 2000.

The 18 member towns examined in 2000 organised and implemented altogether 140 programmes. 92 of these had already been organised earlier as well and could be considered as on-going activities. The number of new activities introduced in the year 2000 amounted to 48. The distribution of the target areas of the individual programmes is shown in Diagram 7. The categories in the diagram contain the following fields of activity:

• Elaboration of a health plan and health profile
• Drug prevention programmes: peer education related to drug prevention, educational activities, prevention programmes
• Anti-smoking programmes: 'Quit and win', programmes meant to facilitate quitting smoking
• Health promotion programmes in schools: competitions in the field of health promotion for schoolchildren, applications related to health and the protection of health, health education training programmes for teachers, health education events, clubs
• Life-style advisery for the population: health day, health week, health shop, consultations on life styles, nutrition, programmes
• Environmental and health action plans: ragweed eradication, cleaning the environment, elaboration and implementation of environmental health action plans
• Prevention programmes in the field of mental health
• Screening programmes
• Health behaviour research and survey
• Other local programmes: Activities listed in this category were all focused on some aspect of health education, information, or influencing health behaviour, like the information programme organised for young mothers on the importance of breast feeding and mother's milk; self-help group for parents of children with special problems; foundation of a sport prize, etc.

The most important on-going programmes include the organisation of a health days, and health weeks; peer teaching related to drug prevention, the eradication of ragweed and cleaning of the environment, as well as the elaboration of health plans and health profiles.

Among the new programmes organised in the year 2000, priority was given to health related research projects and surveys, competitions held for schoolchildren on the topic of health as well as training programmes organised for teachers in the field of health education.

Motivation for the newly introduced programmes came basically from two sources: either they meant joining an already running national programme, or were initiated in order to meet some local needs. The identification and formulation of these local needs was made primarily by educational institutions, local civil organisations and experts working in health institutions.

As to the financial background of these new programmes, they were financed mainly by the local-governments, or by grants applied for and obtained from external sources.

As far as the commitments made when the towns joined the Hungarian Association of Healthy Cities, and the priorities of the local programmes set for the year 2000 are concerned, the following conclusions can be made:

• the priority of local health planning was found to be present in approximately 10% of the new programmes only. This seems to suggest that the majority of the member towns did not emphasise this priority in the organisation of their programmes last year, therefore related activities need more intensive development in the future. This development is expected to be promoted by the survey to be conducted in the near future and focusing on the work performed so far for the elaboration of local health plans and health profiles, and will serve as a basis for the preparation of the assistance/support required by members for further development.
  
  
• The programmes strongly reflect the priority of health communication actions, considering that 37.5% of the newly introduced programmes are connected with this area. Many of them cover fields where no programmes of this kind have been before.
  
  
• The information gained during the survey have revealed that political sustainability as a priority is the least represented in the local programmes. This can be attributed to the fact that the indicators ensuring or strengthening political sustainability can be applied only indirectly, therefore the feedback related to them rarely appears in an explicit way.