World Health Day is celebrated on 7 April to mark the founding of WHO. Each year, the WHO selects a key global health issue and organizes international, regional and local events on the Day and throughout the year
to highlight the selected area.
The theme of World Health Day 2010 is ‘Urbanism and Healthy
Living’. In last year’s World Health Report, urbanization was cited as one of the biggest health challenges of the 21st century. The theme was selected in recognition of the effect urbanization has on our collective health globally and for us all individually.
With the campaign 1000 cities, 1000 lives, events will be organized worldwide during the week of 7 - 11 April 2010. The global goals of the campaign are:
-1000 cities: to open up public spaces to health, whether it be closing off portions of streets to motorized vehicles, activities in parks, town hall meetings, or clean-up campaigns;
-1000 lives: to collect 1000 stories of urban health champions who have taken action and had a significant impact on health in their cities.
The main objective of WHD 2010 is to integrate the day into a sustained public health strategy to incorporate health more broadly into urban public policy.
How to participate:
For cities:
Winning cities to be profiled at World Expo in Shanghai 2010.
For citizens:
The winning champion will appear in person at the international event to launch WHD, April 7, 2010.
