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Following on from last week’s event with schools from South, East and West Belfast, Belfast Healthy Cities again provided a platform for local children from North Belfast to give their views on the development of Child Friendly spaces in Belfast under the theme ‘Healthy Places, Healthy Children’ with Belfast Lord Mayor Nuala McAllister in attendance.

Belfast Healthy Cities Chief Executive, Joan Devlin, attended the ‘Well-being for all – equity and health’ conference organised by the City of Reykjavik and Directorate of Health, Reykjavik.  Joan was invited to give a presentation on ‘Healthy Cities – Connected for Health’ including the experience of Belfast being a healthy city across all six phases since the inception of the European Healthy Cities Network.   

The challenge of how to address increasing health inequality was discussed at a seminar on 18 January. The Reducing Inequalities: Getting Results seminar took place at Queen’s University Belfast and saw more than 100 professionals across sectors come together to hear speakers from Slovenia and Manchester share their experience of tackling inequalities through direct policy action and preventative measures.

The ninth meeting of the World Health Organization European Healthy Cities Task Force is currently taking place in Belfast, hosted by Belfast Healthy Cities. 

A supportive built environment contributes to everyone’s health and wellbeing. Children and older people are two key groups who particularly benefit from environments that provide easy access to services and encourage active living and social interaction. Children and older people tend to spend more time in their local neighbourhoods than others, and can therefore contribute valuable knowledge and expertise of how local spaces work. Both groups, however, have specific needs that need to be taken into consideration in planning the built environment.