Uppsala Health Summit 8 – 9 October 2019: Healthy Urban Childhoods. Save the dates!
By 2050 around 70 % of the world’s population will live in cities. The majority of these urban residents will be children. How can we plan, develop and build our cities in a way that their mental and physical health is promoted and protected? This is the challenge Uppsala Health Summit will address in 2019. Should you be part of the discussions? Make sure to mark the dates in your calendar, and pre-register your interest for a personal invitation.
Cities can bring opportunities and access that help children thrive and develop, but urban life also put their health at risk. Broad knowledge exists within many scientific disciplines on how to plan cities with children´s health in mind. But how can we implement this knowledge when long-term health gains are set against short-term economic wins?
Uppsala Health Summit 2019, Healthy Urban Childhoods, will focus on how to strengthen the child perspective in urban planning to improve children’s mental and physical health.
The discussions at the Summit will procced from the UN declaration the New Urban Agenda and relevant sustainable development goals.
The program will be centered around solution-oriented workshops, and adress specific themes under the overall umbrella of Healthy Urban Childhoods. Topics will include children´s participation in the urban planning process, incentives for child-friendly city planning, places for play and recovery; how to prioritise measures to improve the urban environment, risk perceptions and children’s safe mobility. Mechanisms for creating successful cross-functional collaborations that puts children’s mental and physical health first, will be a challenge that several workshops will address.
In addition, the ECHO-zone concept (ECHO stands for Ending Childhood Obesity) launched at Uppsala Health Summit in 2016 will be revisited at the Summit 2019 and focus on the political processes needed for stable, long-term measures.
Invitations to selected decision-makers, experts and opinion builders will be sent out from March 2019. If this is an area where you can contribute to better knowledge and innovations, make sure you are on the list of invitees!