Municipality Health Promotion – a consensus-process

Health Equity is influenced by the local social and physical environment we are living in. Municipalities all over Europe have a key role in shaping and addressing these living conditions. Current action in this field is fragmented, varies highly within countries and strongly depends on political leadership. This European policy-level intervention in the frame of the Joint Action Health Equity Europe aims at supporting a systematic and structured basis in order to support municipalities to take action for healthy living environments.

In a consensus-process,17 national and regional Public Health authorities and institutes developed a 'Common Policy Framework of Action' that summarizes the current evidence making the case for healthy living environments and the role of municipalities. Furthermore, it provides a conceptual model for interventions including an ideal process, quality criteria and guiding principles that municipal approaches should be based on. The PFA is a part of the overall policy intervention, but also serves as a basis for the project partners to conduct Country Assessmentsand implement actions.

On the basis of the PFA, conclusions could be made on the framework conditions of the various countries for municipal health promotion. In addition, 31 examples of promising practice were identified on the basis of the criteria.

The results show a very heterogeneous situation of municipal health promotion among the partners involved. The various examples also reflect different approaches to action. Some examples will be presented and discussed in the workshop.