the largest health summit in Croatia

From the 15th to the 18th of October, Zagreb will host the participants of the International Healthy Cities Conference, organized by the WHO Regional Office for Europe. The first such conference was held twenty years ago, also in Zagreb.

From the 15th to the 18th of October, Zagreb will host the International Healthy Cities Conference, the largest summit dedicated to health ever to be held in Croatia. The conference organizer is the WHO Regional Office for Europe and the host of the first such conference, in 1988, was also Zagreb. This year, the conference program includes some of the most challenging contemporary topics of today’s world, such as the problems faced by the most vulnerable social groups: the elderly, the children, the poor, and the migrants. The attendants will also discuss the influence of urbanization on the quality of life of urban dwellers, as well as the role it plays towards the health of the general population.

Cities, and their administrators, play an increasingly-important role in the attempts to improve the health of their citizens. According to World Health Organization experts, Zagreb takes credit for an advanced environmental protection system, with plenty of green foliage in urban areas, as well as good social policies and various opportunities available to the general population to improve their quality of life. Every month, different activities are organized in Croatia within the framework of the “Connected by Health” campaign, which was launched by the Croatian Healthy Cities Network. Their main objective is to raise public awareness regarding the particular aspects of environmental protection. The month of June was dedicated to the popularization of socially-responsible projects based on ecological / social consciousness and the culture of living in accordance with sustainable development.

Although the theme coordinators are individual cities or counties, health-related activities will take place in all of the 35 cities and 17 counties that are joined together in the Croatian Healthy Cities Network. Six more socially-relevant themes will be raised by the end of the year within the framework of the “Connected by Health” campaign: promoting democracy, life-long education, recreation and physical activity, the quality of life among elderly and disabled persons, and the development of the community as a whole with good neighborly relations and promotion of volunteer work.