Goyang Special City is actively promoting the creation of a sustainable healthy city where all citizens can enjoy a healthy daily life. The city is putting the health of citizens at the center of policy making and is presenting a systematic healthy city model through the establishment of a healthy environment and operation of various health promotion programs.
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[Korean Today] Goyang City, spurring the creation of a sustainable, healthy city for everyone © Reporter Seung-ju Ji |
Goyang City is reestablishing a plan to build a sustainable healthy city based on the “Goyang City Healthy City Basic Ordinance” and is promoting 63 detailed projects with 72 departments participating. Goyang Special City Mayor Lee Dong-hwan emphasized, “Health is an important factor that determines the quality of life,” and “In order to create an eco-friendly city with healthy body and mind, we will expand parks and sports facilities as well as expand various health support programs.”
63 detailed projects focused on citizens’ health promoted
A ‘healthy city’ is a city where community entities cooperate to improve the health and quality of life of citizens. Goyang City is strengthening the system of policy implementation by developing health impact assessment and implementation indicators based on the World Health Organization (WHO) concept of healthy cities. Through this, it is preparing statistical data necessary for healthy city policies and reflecting citizen health as a key factor in policy making.
Goyang City is currently carrying out 63 detailed projects in five major areas, including infrastructure construction, community participation, and interdepartmental cooperation. In order to continuously manage the performance of projects for the health of citizens, the city periodically checks the implementation indicators and develops health impact assessment criteria. Next year, it plans to further solidify the legal basis by revising related ordinances.
Operate various health support programs
The city operates a variety of programs to promote the health of its citizens. It supports infectious disease prevention, cerebrovascular health management, dementia prevention, and customized health management for each life cycle, and contributes to reducing the social burden by providing information on pregnancy, childbirth, and childrearing, and by organizing self-help groups for families with dementia.
In addition, we are strengthening citizens’ health capacity by providing emergency treatment education such as CPR and AED usage, as well as education on preventing the misuse of medicines. We are activating the resident participation health club ‘Our Neighborhood Health Friends’, and operating various physical activity programs such as sports dance and Pilates at the community center cultural classes.
As a health promotion project for the disabled, we provide physical fitness promotion programs for adults with developmental disabilities, such as ‘Strong Muscle, Strong Physical Strength’, ‘Body Healing, Mind Healing’, a healing agriculture program utilizing plant resources, and ‘Our Movement Complete’, a network for the developmentally disabled.
As a result of these efforts, Goyang City received awards from major institutions in 11 categories including dementia management, smoking cessation, and mental health from the Ministry of Health and Welfare and Gyeonggi Province, and was recognized for its excellence by winning the ‘Good Infrastructure Award’ in the healthy city development category at the Western Pacific Healthy Cities Alliance General Assembly.
Building eco-friendly health infrastructure in daily life
Goyang City is working to enable citizens to enjoy nature and health in their daily lives by creating parks, green spaces, and urban forests. It is creating a school forest in the area around Modang Elementary School and the National Korea Kyungjin School in Ilsandong-gu, improving the environment of the Daejadong Ssamji Park and Juyeop-dong pedestrian path, and operating the Seongra Neighborhood Park and Jeongbalsan Children’s Forest Experience Facility.
In addition, we are quickly completing the construction of Tanhyeon Neighborhood Park (Phase 2) and Todang 1 Neighborhood Park, which are long-term unimplemented urban parks, to support citizens’ healthy leisure activities.
Last May, the city conducted a survey of 2,713 citizens on their awareness of the city’s health, and the results showed that respondents cited the creation of urban forests, parks, and sports facilities (44.1%), expansion of health programs (23.3%), and response to climate change (15.8%) as major tasks. Reflecting on this, the city plans to discuss the direction of the city’s health development in cooperation with the Goyang Research Institute next year and prepare specific implementation plans.
Kim Young-nam, the Mayor of Goyang Special City, said, “A healthy city is a future-oriented city model that takes responsibility for the health and happiness of its citizens,” and added, “We will continue to do our best to create a sustainable healthy city by improving the healthy environment and expanding citizen participation.”
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