Tools to incorporate the health perspective in municipal actions
Urban HEART: Urban Health Equity Assessment and Response Tool
WHO Centre for Health Development (Kobe, Japan)
2010
2010
Link to the resource: https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/79063
- Format:
- Guide
- Target population:
- Local administrations and citizen associations
- Objetive:
-
Support local governments and decision-makers to:
- identify and analyse health inequities among people living in different parts of cities or belonging to different socioeconomic groups in the same city or in different cities and
- facilitate decisions on strategies, interventions and viable, effective measures that should be used to reduce health inequities between cities and within the same city.
- Methodology:
-
It consists of six steps:
- building an inclusive team,
- defining local indicators and benchmarks,
- gathering relevant and valid data,
- generating evidence,
- assessing and prioritising health equity gaps and gradients,
- identifying the best answer.
Using indicators, urban health equity matrices are developed, priorities are identified, and response strategies are formulated.
- Opportunities and limitations:
-
This is a simple, practical and user-friendly tool, and the results it generates should lead to more intuitive understanding of urban health equity by decision-makers and technical staff.
Disaggregated data is in many cases essential to focus interventions, but these may not be available by city or neighbourhood.
- Indicators:
-
Infant mortality. Traffic accident injuries. Access to clean water. Percentage of homes using solid fuels. Incidence rate of work-related injuries or illnesses. Percentage of the labour force working in the informal sector.
- Thematic:
- Housing and neighbourhood communities Public space Green infrastructure Mobility and accessibility Equipment and services Cohesion and social capital
- Link to health:
- Physical Mental Social
- Scale of the field of study:
- Neighbourhood (or higher)
- Implementation phase:
- Diagnosis / pre-project Monitoring and evaluation Implementation
- Methodological approach:
- Observation Qualitative / Participatory Questionnaire
