SHINE HIT supports bite-sized briefings to create healthier cities
- 20th January 2022
Bristol Health Partners’ SHINE Health Integration Team (HIT) is building on its partnership with the journal Cities & Health by launching a new initiative to get evidence on creating healthier cities into the hands of policymakers, practitioners and communities.
The SHINE HIT, which has a long track record of supporting healthy and inclusive neighbourhoods, will publish and amplify regular, bite-sized ‘City Know-How’ updates to help translate knowledge into policy and practice.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and UN-Habitat recognise that local neighbourhoods are vital to supporting people’s health and reducing health inequalities. In England and Wales, the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities supports local authority planners and public health practitioners through its Planning and Health (Healthy Places) programme.
Cities and Health, published by Routledge, is a campaigning journal which aims to improve the spatial governance, planning, design and management of cities to support health and health equity. It works closely with authors to get their research to policy makers, practitioners and communities. Bite-sized ‘City Know-how’ articles give quick access to the latest evidence at a glance.
Supporting health through place-making is a challenge which cuts across many different sectors. Each ‘City Know-how’ is targeted at interested and influential parties, from those who directly shape our built environments such as urban designers, planners, transport professionals and landscape architects, to those who can support healthier place-making such as policy makers and politicians, public health practitioners and local communities themselves.
As a network partner of the journal, Bristol Health Partners will disseminate these short, relevant research updates through its news and social media feeds, as well as linking to free-to-access publications in the journal itself.
Marcus Grant, expert advisor on healthy cities to WHO and UN-Habitat, founding member of SHINE HIT and Cities & Health editor-in-chief, says:
“I’m excited about this new initiative, which will bring bite-sized knowledge from the journal straight to the wider Bristol Health Partners’ network to build a bank of knowledge for healthy urban place-making that can influence and impact upon policy and practice.”
