Date: 26 to 29 September, 2007

Location:  Q1 Resort, Surfers Paradise, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia

About the International Forum

The forum will provide an opportunity to meet with WHO representatives, Mayors and health professionals from throughout the region including Japan, China, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Australia and the Philippines.

The two day forum will host the annual Asia Pacific Regional Steering Committee meeting for the alliance and provide an opportunity for participants to interact and present keynote papers, workshops, dialogue and site visits on the health issues facing our cities including:

• the structural determinants of health
• state-of-the-art regional infrastructure planning
• future urban design and the growth of cities
• active and healthy cities programs
• climate change adaptation
• health impact assessment and hazardous pollution scenarios
• disaster management
• strategic health action planning and evaluation and methods of public health outcome reporting

Healthy Cities

The Healthy Cities approach is based on the concept that a social, economic and physical environment is the key to the health of city dwellers. The Healthy Cities program aims to cope with health issues that have emerged with urbanisation.

While urbanisation is underway at an alarming pace worldwide, urban health issues become complex and this complexity requires cooperation between the conventional health sector and non-health sectors. Healthy Cities is a global movement with networks established in all six WHO regions.

Benefits for Councils

The Healthy City Plan is the product of a local process whereby representatives of the community and other agencies, including state government officers, combine with local government to develop goals and strategies to respond to local public health priorities.

Local government is well placed to provide the leadership and capacity for action that is necessary to ensure all residents have an equitable opportunity for improved health. This is especially so in regional areas where local government, with input from councillors elected to represent the community, can supply the facilities necessary for undertaking what can be quite a comprehensive planning process at times. In many regional and rural communities resources are often scarce or stretched too widely to enable development of a plan, which demonstrates an understanding of health needs, the need for partnerships with health agencies and has the wherewithal to promote community participation in decision-making.

During the Townsville experience of conducting broad community workshops over a lengthy period, it became obvious that in some cases it was the first opportunity for many agencies to work together with community to obtain specific outcomes for proactive community health benefits. For those of us participating, the sense of community empowerment was overwhelming. For those many participants whose huge workloads had kept them isolated in offices, the very process of the workshops provided a first time opportunity for meaningful collaboration. The successful outcome of all these endeavours is an accredited Healthy City by the World Health Organisation.