Tainan Healthy City Project I

This is a continuity of three-year program. The first year is the preparatory stage, its purpose is to find out the expectation of the health city to Tainan`s people, collect and estimate health problems of Tainan , analyzing Healthy Cities experiences all over the world , building up healthy city website and publishing the Journal of Health City,Taiwan. A core group was formed by experts and scholars in different fields at Cheng Kung University ; they set up a Healthy Cities Research Center and an office with three subgroups focusing on health, environmental health and social health. Their responsibilities include developing indicators, organizing forums, providing educational training, devising strategies, formulating plans, exchanging ideas and experiences in a global setting, and establishing the mechanism for implementation of the project. The main objectives of the first year, or the preparation phase, are learning about the residents` expectations of Healthy Cities, collecting and assessing Healthy Cities indicators in Tainan City at the moment, analyzing the implementation of Healthy Cities projects worldwide, creating a Healthy Cities website and publishing Healthy Cities journals. Standing on phone interviews of residents in Tainan: Results of the health group, citizens are fairly satisfied with their health status. There are more than half (50.24%) citizens hope to hold activities to solve the pressure. The most popular theme of the health city of citizen expectation is "the life in Healthy Community". By the way, citizens obtained the health information from TV, radio, newspapers and magazines. In the environmental group, it is fairly enough for residents to have the life space, and half people (50.18% ) think that it`s not enough for sport leisure. The major transportation is motorcycle (68.58% ), then the automobile (23.42% ). Over half of the citizens think the mass transportation system is inconvenient. In the society, most citizens are still satisfied with their work. There are 58.52% of the citizens worry about unemployment, and 56.69% of the citizens think it is difficult to find job. The 91.97 of residents don`t know the number of special line protecting women and children , it is obvious that citizens are insufficient in the safe protection information of women and children , and citizens participate in the community are low. This program is exchanged with people and the forum. Understanding the expectations, idea and viewpoints of citizens to the healthy city, then integrate planning and objectives from all department in local government to make the goal of three dimensions in the future. The study group collected seven healthy cities in the world: including Toronto , Indiana state , California , Liverpool ,Sheffield , Glasgow and Shanghai, the detail materials published in the journal. We found it is not easy to research information in non-English countries because language limited. And statistics of indicators in a lot of healthy cities have not continuous data, so it`s not easy to evaluate results of implementing healthy city.