Health Information for Health Promotion at (Urban) Neighbourhood Level

Abstract

Health promotion is the salutogenic approach to health. It focuses on “health” instead of “healthcare”; it creates environments which encourage health promoting lifestyles. Disease prevention, on the contrary, is the pathogenic approach to health. It focuses on healthcare, i.e. after the onset of diseases. As healthcare for non-communicable disease patients is the major burden on health systems worldwide, health promotion is becoming more and more crucial to achieve sustainability of health systems. With increasing urban population, the emphasis on the salutogenic approach to health in urban areas is pivotal since the urban environment shapes dwellers’ lifestyle. Providing planners and researchers relevant health data and information of the urban environment at neighbourhood level is thus important to create urban health promoting settings, especially when/if certain health-related outcomes are specific to certain neighbourhoods. However, while these data and information are not uncommon at national level (and sometimes city level), those at neighbourhood level are scarce. Due to the length and time limitation, the author only focuses on the urban built environment. The correlations between some urban built environments and health-related outcomes, e.g. diet, physical activities, social capital, are reviewed. “Walkability for Health”, an urban built environment assessment tool is also reviewed. The author concludes that despite the abundance of studies regarding urban built environment and health-related outcomes, the translation of these correlations to health data and information is still challenging. Future studies should focus on developing comprehensive schemes to translate health determinants in the urban built environment into useful health information.