In-country activities
Republic of Moldova showcased at the 2018 Healthy Cities Conference
Diana Berari & Valeriu Sava
This year’s International Healthy Cities Conference “Healthy Cities in an Era of Change” took place in Odessa on 13-14 September 2018. The event was arranged by the Alliance for Public Health (Ukraine), AFEW International (Netherlands) and the public authorities of the city of Odessa, in collaboration with Knowledge Action Change (UK). The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation’s Health Life Project gave an oral presentation and took part in a panel to share its experience in promoting health and developing multi-sectoral partnerships to deliver healthy outcomes in Moldova.
In agreement with the Ministry of Health, Labour and Social Protection and the National Agency for Public Health, the Healthy Life Project also sponsored the participation of district-level staff from Orhei and Cahul to present a poster entitled „Healthy cities - a healthy way of living, developing effective messages for changing behaviour”.
The Healthy Life Project is working to strengthen the capacities of multi-sectoral teams at district level in order to support inclusion of health in all areas of activity. Thus, representatives of the health and social sector, the local public administration, the education system, the police and others are encouraged to jointly consider the health profile of their district and to extrapolate the data in their own locality, identifying the public health priorities for each community and to plan and implement actions to solve these problems.
“Our goal is to share the Moldovan experience of inter-sectoral approach and health promotion in all public policies. It is important for Moldovan specialists from district-level to have the opportunity to participate in such international events as they have direct experience that others can learn from. Realizing that the issue is global, exchanging experience, looking at tools that other countries apply improves professionalism and helps disseminate good practices”, Carolina Cerniciuc, consultant to the project considers.
Being separated by sessions, the Conference programme was designed to address a wide range of issues related to public health in cities, such as healthy diet and physical exercise, health challenges across the migration cycle, increasing access of people with low mobility to public transport, human rights and stigmatization of vulnerable groups, healthy and active aging, and ensuring local public health.
The last year's edition of the International City Health Conference took place in Basel, Switzerland, and was dedicated to „Empowerment, Involvement and Partnership: participating to develop healthy cities” organized by Knowledge-Action-Change. The first edition of the Conference took place in 2012 in London.
Links:
Ministry of Health, Labour and Social Protection, Republic of Moldova http://msmps.gov.md/ro
Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, Republic of Moldova https://www.eda.admin.ch/deza/en/home/countries/moldova.html
Healthy Life Project https://www.facebook.com/viatasan.md/
Conference website: https://cityhealthinternational.org/2018/home/welcome
Contacts:
Ms. Diana Berari, Community Coordinator | diana.berari@viatasan.md
Dr. Valeriu Sava, National Program Officer in Health, Representation of the Embassy of Switzerland to Moldova, Swiss Cooperation Office, Chisinau | valeriu.sava@eda.admin.ch
