During the early years, Belfast Healthy Cities focused on
· Increasing understanding of the definition of health across the city;
· Emphasizing a community participation approach to health development.
· Raising an awareness of inequalities in health
· Developing intersectoral working groups to address issues raised through community participation

Some projects during Phase I were:

• Developing a Home Safety Check Scheme, which was taken over by Belfast City Council in 1990 and continues to operate
• Developing a policy on children’s play, which led to the adoption of a Statement on Play
• A Travellers’ Health project

Achieving Impact

Belfast Healthy Cities’ partnership has been at the forefront of establishing strategic partnerships for health improvement planning in Belfast. Health improvement and development remains at the heart of Healthy Cities’ work and provides a way to maintain and build on these partnerships. Above all, as a partnership, we have taken the WHO Healthy Cities’ goals seriously and worked consistently to achieve them locally by testing new ideas for comprehensive approaches to public health. We are recognised as one of the lead cities within the WHO European Healthy Cities Network.

The Healthy Cities pioneering approach can be seen in the regional interdepartmental public health strategy Investing for Health. It also laid the groundwork for the Health Action Zones and the Healthy Living Centres concept and it has been adopted by a wide range of programmes, initiatives and sectors across the city as the need for intersectoral working is recognised to deliver action that brings tangible benefits to addressing health and social issues.

One of our strengths is to continue to provide a platform which can be used to encourage all sectors to focus their work on health and quality of life.