title: Is a healthy city also an age-friendly city?
abstract: Healthy Ageing is an important focus of the European Healthy Cities Network and has been supported by WHO since 2003 as a key strategic topic, since 2010 in cooperation with the Global Network of Age-friendly Cities and Communities. Based on the methodology of realist evaluation, this article synthesizes qualitative evidence from 33 structured case studies (CS) from 32 WHO European Healthy Cities, 72 annual reports from Network cities and 71 quantitative responses to a General Evaluation Questionnaire. City cases are assigned to three clusters containing the eight domains of an age-friendly city proposed by WHO's Global Age-friendly City Guide published in 2007. The analysis of city's practice and efforts in this article takes stock of how cities have developed the institutional prerequisites and processes necessary for implementing age-friendly strategies, programmes and projects. A content analysis of the CS maps activities across age-friendly domains and illustrates how cities contribute to improving the social and physical environments of older people and enhance the health and social services provided by municipalities and their partners.
authors.affiliation: Healthy Ageing, Disability and Long-term Care, Public Health Consultant, Copenhagen, Denmark jackisch@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Josephine
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Jackisch
authors.affiliation: Healthy City Project, Municipality of Udine, Regional Health Trust for Purchasing and Shared Services, Italy.
authors.forename: Gianna
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Zamaro
authors.affiliation: Centre for Health and Social Care Research, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK.
authors.forename: Geoff
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Green
authors.affiliation: World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe, UN City, Marmorvej 51, DK 2100 Copenhagen Ø, Denmark.
authors.forename: Manfred
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Huber
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging; D002947:Cities; D002958:City Planning; D004779:Environment Design; D005060:Europe; D006291:Health Policy; D006293:Health Promotion / Q000379:methods / Q000458:organization & administration; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D019982:Organizational Case Studies; D015397:Program Evaluation; D012111:Residence Characteristics; D012931:Social Environment; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014504:Urban Health; D014505:Urban Population; D014944:World Health Organization; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Europe; evaluation of healthy cities network; older people; policy and implementation