Top Things to Know: Toward Heart-Healthy and Sustainable Cities
Published: March 04, 2024
- At present nearly 56% of the global population – nearly 4.4 billion people live in cities and by 2050, 6.6 billion inhabitants or over 70% of the world’s population are expected to be living in urban environments.
- This level of population growth will necessitate massive upgrades and the development of new infrastructure to allow for smart, sustainable, and healthy cities of the future.
- There is widespread recognition that although cities can serve as engines of economic growth and innovation, a vast majority of them are currently failing this mandate, and are not delivering on environmental, health economic, and equity targets.
- Poorly designed urban provisioning systems are starkly evident worldwide, resulting in unprecedented exposures to adverse cardiometabolic risk factors including lack of access to heart healthy diets, greenery, adequate physical activity and beneficial social interactions.
- This American Heart Association policy statement presents a conceptual framework, summarizes the evidence base and outlines policy principles for transforming key urban provisioning systems to heart-health and sustainability outcomes.
- Seven urban provisioning systems that provide food, energy, mobility-connectivity, housing, green infrastructure, water management and waste management, lie at the core of human health, wellbeing and sustainability.
- These provisioning systems transcend city boundaries reaching far into regional surroundings and global supply networks.
- Addressing the diverse and multi-scaled social, environmental, and infrastructure risk factors that contribute to cardiometabolic risk in cities, by transforming the local environment as well as transboundary provisioning systems, represents a new paradigm for public health.
- Integrated spatial planning of the urban environment that improves access to jobs, key services such as health care, urban parks and greenery, heart healthy food, safe water, walkable and bikeable streets, safe living environments and solid waste management, while also reducing the demand for energy and motorized travel; AND innovations in the transboundary supply of energy, fuels, construction materials, healthy foods, and water that can dramatically reduce regional air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
- Transforming urban systems with a cardiometabolic health first approach will help mitigate undesirable environmental exposures, improve cardiovascular and metabolic health while improving planetary health.
Citation
Rajagopalan S, Ramaswami A, Bhatnagar A, Brook RD, Fenton M, Gardner C, Neff R, Russell AG, Seto KC, Whitsel LP; on behalf of the American Heart Association Council on Hypertension; Council on Lifestyle and Cardiometabolic Health; Council on Peripheral Vascular Disease; Council on Lifelong Congenital Heart Disease and Heart Health in the Young; Council on Cardiovascular Surgery and Anesthesia; and the American Heart Association Advocacy Coordinating Committee. Toward heart-healthy and sustainable cities: a policy statement from the American Heart Association. Circulation. Published online March 4, 2024. doi: 10.1161/CIR.0000000000001217