How can urban knowledge sharing influence HiAP frameworks? And how can city governments enable knowledge sharing on city-level HiAP approaches? Students of the LDE minor Smart and Shared Cities conducted research to analyse these questions through a case study of four diverse cities.
Nowhere else is the challenge for healthier communities more pronounced than in cities, where issues of pollution, housing, concentrated poverty, violence, and changes in economic base converge. This impacts the urban built and social environment and in turn population health. City governments are increasingly looking towards the Health in All Policies (HiAP) approach for public policy to structurally address these social determinants across different sectors, including education, transportation, housing, and urban planning. HiAP aims to improve health equity and population health through systematically considering the implications decisions have on health and the health system, seeking synergies, and avoiding harmful health impacts.
Health in all Policies, HiAP, is an approach that helps consider health implications of decisions. HiAP within urban environments is important due to the multiple challenges faced within cities, such as pollution, crowding and housing. This has untapped potential when looking at the effect of context variables and the critical conditions for the sustainable implementation of HiAP. The aim of the research is to study these context variables and critical conditions for the sharing of urban HiAP knowledge, with the goal of eventually creating a framework for general urban knowledge sharing. A qualitative research approach has focused on using previous research on HiAP, urban knowledge sharing and policy transfer, to analyse four cases on HiAP within the urban environment.
A visual representation of HiAP provided by the World Health Organization (WHO)
This case study showed that context variables heavily influence the focus of HiAP within the urban environment. The key features identified by Leppo et al. (2013) confirmed the importance of successful HiAP implementation. Furthermore, the involvement of different sectors within HiAP and sufficient funding are necessary for effective implementation and should be added to Leppo's factors. Most importantly, transparency and the context surrounding the shared HiAP approaches are necessary for the knowledge sharing of HiAP to be effective.
The research on Health in All Policies in conducted by students Ishak Özdemir, Tommy in ‘t Veld, Zedi van Oostrom, and Meri Bourhaleb from the LDE minor Smart and Shared Cities.
