Background

Health is a valuable asset both to an individual and the community, and that the prosperity of a society is greatly determined by the well-being of people living there. As a result, Urban Health has become a major concern of many big cities all over the world in the past two decades. Hong Kong, undoubtedly, is no exception.

Hong Kong is now facing various health-related problems in the new public health era - escalating demand for medical services due to the cumulative health risk of the aging population; increasing morbidity related to diseases of lifestyle; shrinking resources for health care services; changing patterns of diseases from communicable diseases to chronic illnesses or malignancy. All these challenges have become more and
more critical, and there seems to be an urge for new solutions to stop the situation from worsening.

Creating a healthy community can never be an individual's assignment. We believe that in order to ensure the sustainability of the project to promote health of our public, the whole community must be involved. Furthermore, the concept of health has been changed over the past years. Its definition has been changed to holistically healthylife, including physical, social, psychological and spiritual well-being, from merely the absence of diseases.

In fact, the WHO "Healthy City Project" had been launched in the 80s with initial achievement throughout Europe. Now, within Europe alone, there are national and regional networks involving over 1000 cities and towns hroughout 29 countries. And, the 'Safe Community' is also a project advocated by the WHO, which aims to assist different countries to build up the culture of safe community. Basically, all the participating countries will adopt the following guiding principles while launching the above projects: