Belfast - healthy city - Audio
by The Open University
In the late nineteen eighties, Belfast became part of the World Health Organisation's Healthy Cities Project. The aim was to get as many institutions as possible to make health central to their planning and to give the diverse communities of Belfast a real say in their future. What were the challenges they faced? What solutions did they evolve? In this album Healthy Cities founder member Ilona Kickbusch and Belfast health promotion professionals Joan Devlin, David Stewart and Mary Black explore the history of this important health project. They reveal the crucial role that partnerships across both public and private bodies played in the success of the project. This material, recorded in 2006, forms part of The Open University course K311 Promoting public health: skills, perspectives and practice.
Episodes
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Belfast - healthy city
A short introduction to this album.
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Healthy Cities: the idea
Ilona Kickbusch on how the Healthy Cities Movement began in the mid nineteen eighties as a European initiative.
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Healthy Cities: the reality
Ilona Kickbusch on how the initiative spread out from Europe to the rest of the world, and is particularly important in South America.
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Belfast as a healthy city
Joan Devlin of Belfast Healthy Cities on the historical high levels of deprivation in Belfast.
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Implementing WHO targets
Joan Devlin on how Belfast set out a five year plan dealing with issues such as urban planning and healthy aging.
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Influences on policy
David Stewart, director of public health, EHSSB, reveals how Belfast is influenced by what is happening in the UK and in Eire.
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Euroepean influences on policy
David Stewart on how public Health policy in Belfast is also significantly influenced by new European initiatives and legislation.
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Health challenges in Belfast
Joan Devlin on how public health in Northern Ireland has improved in recent years but in parts of Belfast there are still significant levels of deprivation.
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Re-positioning public heath
Joan Devlin explains that there is now recognition in Northern Ireland than health issues have to be tackled in a broad way taking in areas such as housing and education.
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Aids to implementing policy
David Stewart on how Northern Ireland's size is advantageous when it comes to cross-sector work and experimental projects.
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Barriers to implementing policy
David Stewart on how Northern Ireland is disadvantaged by the British government's Barnett Formula and its complex local government system
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Legacies of the troubles
David Stewart on how Northern Ireland's sectarian divide can throw up unexpected health issues such as problems finding sufficient space to exercise.
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The Belfast City Health plan
Joan Devlin on the consultation document produced to try to get organisations to think about health in all aspects of their planning.
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Success of Belfast Healthy City
Joan Devlin on how Belfast has been successful in implementing its Healthy Cities programme but there is a lot of work still to be done.
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Politics and participation
Mary Black of the NW Belfast Health Action Zone explains how Northern Ireland's difficult political situation added an extra layer of challenge to implementing the Healthy Cities policy,
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Belfast Health Action Zones
Mary Black on how Health Action Zones were set up in Belfast to address significant inequalities in health in different parts of the city.
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Challenges and priorities
Mary Black on how health workers in Belfast realised that the real challenge was to bring together different stakeholders and get them to work together in an integrated way.
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Working in partnership
Joan Devlin on how Belfast Healthy Cities is a model for further partnership initiatives.
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Aids to partnership work
Mary Black on how, for partnerships to succeed, there must be careful consideration of all the different players involved and a strong guiding vision.
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Barriers to partnership work
Mary Black on how the Belfast Healthy Cities project has never had sufficient funding of its own so it has always needed to find ways to lever funding out of a variety of partners.
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Women's Health information group
Kathleen Feenan talks about The Women's Health Information Group, a successful voluntary network of women who are trained to distribute information about a variety of health related issues.
About this show
In the late nineteen eighties, Belfast became part of the World Health Organisation's Healthy Cities Project. The aim was to get as many institutions as possible to make health central to their planning and to give the diverse communities of Belfast a real say in their future. What were the challenges they faced? What solutions did they evolve? In this album Healthy Cities founder member Ilona Kickbusch and Belfast health promotion professionals Joan Devlin, David Stewart and Mary Black explore the history of this important health project. They reveal the crucial role that partnerships across both public and private bodies played in the success of the project. This material, recorded in 2006, forms part of The Open University course K311 Promoting public health: skills, perspectives and practice.
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