This research analyzes the relationship between social indexes and the implementation level of the Family Health Program (PSF) in cities of Santa Catarina State, Brazil. The social indexes applied were: total population, human development index (HDI), per capita expenses with health and political party at local administration. Findings have shown a strong relationship between the population num...

The roots of the Healthy Cities concept may be traced back to 1844, when the Health of Towns Association was formed in the United Kingdom to deliberate on Edwin Chadwick’s reports about poor living conditions in towns and cities. The revival of those concerns in the ‘‘new public health’’ era dates from the Healthy Toronto 2000 convention in 1984 and, subsequently, the enthusiasm of the World He...

The roots of the Healthy Cities concept may be traced back to 1844, when the Health of Towns Association was formed in the United Kingdom to deliberate on Edwin Chadwick’s reports about poor living conditions in towns and cities. The revival of those concerns in the ‘‘new public health’’ era dates from the Healthy Toronto 2000 convention in 1984 and, subsequently, the enthusiasm of the World He...

More than half of the world’s population now live in cities [1], and while urbanization has the potential to allow greater access to health care for all, huge discrepancies in how resources are allocated within cities result in major inequities in health [2]. Addressing these discrepancies and improving health require accurate assessment. To that point, earlier this month PLOS Medicine publishe...

'Caring and Supportive Environments' are fundamental to a social model of health and were a core theme of Phase V (2009-13) of the WHO European Healthy Cities Network. Deploying the methodology of realist evaluation, this article synthesizes qualitative evidence from 112 highly structured case studies from 68 Network cities and 71 responses to a General Evaluation Questionnaire, which asked cit...

B ig City Health Departments: Leadership Perspectives highlights innovative strategies and programs of the health commissioners of the largest American cities. Led by Drs Jonathan Fielding of Los Angeles and Thomas Frieden of New York City, the commissioners formed the Big Cities Health Coalition (BCHC) in 2002 to reflect their needs as distinct from those of the many smaller jurisdictions acro...

We describe the utilization of health services by men who have sex with men (MSM) in South African cities, their perceptions of available health services, and their service preferences. We triangulated data from 32 key informant interviews (KIIs), 18 focus group discussions (FGDs) with MSM in four cities, and a survey of 285 MSM in two cities, recruited through respondent-driven sampling in 200...

The majority of the world's population will live in cities in the next few years, and the pace of urbanization worldwide will continue to accelerate over the coming decades. Such a dramatic demographic shift can be expected to have an impact on population health. Although there has been historic interest in how city living is associated with health, this interest has waxed and waned and a cogen...