Urban Labs for Better Health for All in the Baltic Sea Region – boosting cross-sectoral cooperation for health and wellbeing in the cities

Healthy Boost

PROGRAMME 2014-2020

priority

1 Innovation

objective

1.3 Non-technological innovation

Healthy Boost

The Healthy Boost project addresses the health burden of city residents due to unhealthy lifestyles. Cities such as Poznan, Klaipeda, Jelgava, Tartu and Turku experiment with different methods of community participation, health learning or cross-sectoral cooperation. The main objective of the project is to make urban policies for health and well-being more innovative, more effective and more integrated. This includes work on cross-sectoral cooperation with potential to be used in other fields as well.

Project summary

Cross-sectoral cooperation can boost health and wellbeing in the Baltic cities

The Healthy Boost project brings together fourteen partners representing different levels of governance within various sectors. Their aim is to improve the capacities of local authorities to enhance health and well-being of citizens through cross-sectoral cooperation.

What’s the problem and Healthy Boost solution?

The project addresses the transnational challenge of the health burden due to unhealthy lifestyles of the city residents, which cannot be solved by the current fragmented, incoherent urban policies. The project wants to contribute to the improved – more innovative, effective and integrated – cross-sectoral urban policies. Healthy Boost enables the participation of citizens in planning policies for health and wellbeing, improves cross-sectoral cooperation in cities of the Baltic Sea region to support city administration in the provision of health services. In addition, the project enhances the innovativeness of the cities‘ administration in Baltic Sea region to respond better to current and future complex challenges in the municipalities.

What will stay after the project is over?

The main output of Healthy Boost project is a model for effective cooperation for cross-sectoral urban policies for health and wellbeing developed and tested by nine cities in six countries. Improved after the feedback from different stakeholders, it shall serve other cities in more integrated future work.

details

Budgets

Healthy Boost
in numbers

2.54

Million

Total
1.90

Million

Erdf
0.15

Million

Eni + Russia
0.00

Million

Norway

Highlights by mid-term

The project developed a model for cross-sectoral cooperation for health promotion. It was based on scientific literature research and complemented by a self- assessment in the partner cities of Poznan, Klaipeda, Jelgava, Tartu and Turku. The self-assessment gave information of a city’s institutional capacity to implement cross-sectoral cooperation from two points of view: the formal structures for the cooperation (strategies, processes, practices) and the way cooperation works. The project identified gaps in five strategic and operational domains of cooperation: risk identification, leadership, communication, coordination, motivation.

After the model was completed, the partner cities ran several pilots along the lines of the specific roadmaps that the city partners designed beforehand (to set scope, timing, goals, actors). For instance, Jelgava Local Municipality developed a pilot concerning the creation of eco-friendly and healthy catering services for schools. Pilots found suitable ways of working with the virtual reality tools, for instance to display cycling routes in Klaipėda old town.

Throughout the project implementation partners were paired with the objective of enhancing the transnational peer-learning experience. The pairs were the followings:

City of Turku (FI) and the Association “Healthy cities, districts and villages” (RU)
Jelgava Local Municipality (LV) and Suwalki Municipality (PL)
City of Poznan (PL) and City of Helsinki (FI)
Tartu City Government (EE) and Klaipeda City Public Health Bureau (LT)

Outputs

Project Stories