Healthy Cities is a program to create healthier cities and citizens. Sanitas invites employees of large companies and individual citizens to participate, with the aim of promoting healthy lifestyles and encouraging the creation of healthier and more sustainable urban environments.
It is, therefore, a program to raise awareness about what the cities of the future should be like, sustainable and healthy.
Cross-border/international
Spain
Spain
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Poland, Mexico and Chile
It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
No
No
Yes
2022-11-01
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Sanitas Type of organisation: For-profit company First name of representative: Nerea Last name of representative: González Díaz Gender: Female Nationality: Spain Function: Head of Communication for Sanitas and Bupa Europe & Latin America at Sanitas Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: C. de la Ribera del Loira, 52, 28042 Madrid Town: Madrid Postal code: 28042 Country: Spain Direct Tel:+34 654 27 73 08 E-mail:ngonzalezd@sanitas.es Website:https://corporativo.sanitas.es/sostenibilidad-sanitas/healthy-cities/
Healthy Cities is a programme to create healthier cities and citizens. Sanitas invites employees of large companies and individual citizens to participate, with the aim of promoting healthy lifestyles and encouraging the creation of healthier and more sustainable urban environments.
It is therefore a programme to raise awareness about what the cities of the future should be like, sustainable and healthy, and how we citizens should be increasingly committed to our own health and to the health of the planet through our own physical and emotional wellbeing. It thus responds to the One Health concept supported by the World Health Organisation (WHO), which stresses the importance of understanding health as a whole, since the health of people, ecosystems and animals are intimately linked.
Sustainability
Commitment
Environment
Reforestation
RSC
To promote healthy lifestyles to improve people's health. Walking 6,000 steps a day is equivalent to the 150 minutes-300 minutes a week advocated by the WHO and increases calorie expenditure by between 1,500 and 2,000 Kcal a week, the minimum amount needed to reduce cardiovascular risk, according to the Spanish Heart Foundation, a scientific partner of Healthy Cities. In total, participants from the 4 countries took 4.9 million steps during the challenge.
Every year Healthy Cities proposes a double challenge to society. The double challenge of the seventh edition of Healthy Cities came to an end last June and achieved the goal of walking 6,000 steps a day and leaving the car at home one day a week. In return, Sanitas pledged to donate one tree for each person who met the challenge.
Thanks to the commitment of citizens from all over Spain, Poland, Mexico and Chile, who participated individually, and the employees of 300 companies registered in the challenge, together they managed to total more than 4.9 billion steps in the two months of the seventh edition, a figure equivalent to walking around the Earth 91 times.
Once the challenge was completed, Sanitas handed over the donations to different cities and NGOs for the reforestation of urban green areas and forests. Sanitas has continued to collaborate with the Madrid City Council by making a new donation to the city's Metropolitan Forest. As a novelty, it has collaborated with another urban forest, the "Bosque de los Zaragozanos" with Ecodes and the Zaragoza City Council. In addition, it has supported to WWF to expand the reforested area in the projects in which it participated in the last edition in the Garraf Park (Barcelona) and in Cortes de Pallás (Valencia), with the aim of extending the collaboration of previous years to recover the reforested areas affected by the serious fires. In all cases, native species have been planted to ensure maintenance.
Creating green spaces that improve the health of the environments in which we live. Thanks to the donation, nearly 100 hectares of trees have been planted in 6 projects in Spain, 5 urban forests in Mexico, 1 large project in Poland and 1 in Senegal.
The relationship between people's health and the environment is increasingly supported by science. For this reason, Healthy Cities seeks not only to promote the health of citizens and employees, but also of the environments in which they work and live. Therefore, the initiative also acts as a platform to claim the importance of sustainable urban and leisure environments, seeking to encourage employees, citizens and future generations to adopt healthy lifestyles.
Every year Healthy Cities proposes a double challenge to society. The double challenge of the seventh edition of Healthy Cities came to an end last June and achieved the goal of walking 6,000 steps a day and leaving the car at home one day a week. In return, Sanitas pledged to donate one tree for each person who met the challenge.
Thanks to the commitment of citizens from all over Spain, Poland, Mexico and Chile, who participated individually, and the employees of 300 companies registered in the challenge, together they managed to total more than 4.9 billion steps in the two months of the seventh edition, a figure equivalent to walking around the Earth 91 times.
Once the challenge was completed, Sanitas handed over the donations to different cities and NGOs for the reforestation of urban green areas and forests. Sanitas has continued to collaborate with the Madrid City Council by making a new donation to the city's Metropolitan Forest. As a novelty, it has collaborated with another urban forest, the "Bosque de los Zaragozanos" with Ecodes and the Zaragoza City Council. In addition, it has supported to WWF to expand the reforested area in the projects in which it participated in the last edition in the Garraf Park (Barcelona) and in Cortes de Pallás (Valencia), with the aim of extending the collaboration of previous years to recover the reforested areas affected by the serious fires. In all cases, native species have been planted to ensure maintenance.
1. For employees
They can participate in different ways:
-With an individual challenge: set themselves the challenge of walking 6,000 steps a day, which is equivalent to the minutes of weekly physical activity recommended by the World Health Organisation for maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
Inter-company competition. Team up with colleagues and compete against other companies to achieve the best result in the challenge.
-Solidarity challenge: set off "for a good cause", with a tangible result that can be seen in a Spanish city and that works as a "legacy".
2. For companies
-A physical activity challenge that complements the health promotion actions of their employees.
-A collective platform to demonstrate the business community's commitment to health promotion. The project is aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In particular with SDG 3 Health and Wellbeing, 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities, 13 Climate Action and 17 Partnerships to achieve the goals.
-A proposal aligned with the needs of its employees and society as a whole to combat sedentary lifestyles and regenerate urban spaces.
3. For society
With the help of the programme's partners and collaborators (Spanish Olympic Committee, Spanish Paralympic Committee, Real Madrid and the Spanish Heart Foundation):
-Promotion of what the Olympic Committee calls "grassroots sport" in an inclusive and accessible way.
-Focusing attention on the value of perseverance in daily physical activity, through a challenge accessible to everyone, athlete or not (walking 6000 steps/day).
-Raise awareness of the impact of the environment and air quality on physical and mental health.
4. In our cities
In the seventh and last edition, a new donation to the city's Metropolitan Forest. As a novelty, it will collaborate with another urban forest this year, the "Bosque de los Zaragozanos" in collaboration with Ecodes and Zaragoza City Council.
These record figures have been made possible thanks to the effort and perseverance of the 21,000 people from the four countries involved who have joined the initiative this year. As a result, Sanitas will fulfil its commitment to plant in Spain 11,000 trees, one for each participant in the challenge, and globally almost 100 hectares of trees which will contribute to improving the quality of the air we breathe, protecting biodiversity and creating healthy green spaces in cities.
What is most innovative is the concept on which the programme is based, which argues that the health of the planet and of people is connected. To be healthier you need to take care of yourself by leading a healthy lifestyle, but you also need to have a healthy environment in which to live. Scientific evidence shows that trees can absorb CO2 and improve the quality of the air around us, which turns green areas into healthier zones, which also favour the practice of exercise through running or walking.
In addition to the mission to walk 6,000 steps a day, which is equivalent to the minutes of physical activity per week recommended by the WHO, the challenge that urged them to leave the car at home one day a week and opt for a sustainable means of transport has made it possible to avoid the emissions corresponding to 2,873 working days' travel, which would have emitted 14.2 tonnes of CO2, or the equivalent of the emissions of 162 Madrid-Barcelona flights.
Healthy Cities proposes a health challenge to its participants (walking 6,000 steps a day) and an environmental challenge (leaving the car at home one day a week and using sustainable means of transport). The level of compliance with the challenge is monitored through an app, with which each participant can see their progress in the ranking of their contribution to the project. It should be noted that in the seventh edition, held in 2022, the programme was open to companies and the general public so that anyone could participate.
The project can be extended to any area or country. In fact, it was born in Spain in 2015 and after 6 years of life, in 2022 it was extended with the same methodology to 3 more countries (Poland, Chile and Mexico) and in the new edition of 2023 we hope to expand the number of countries involved.
Healthy Cities addresses three global challenges identified by the SDGs: the need to create healthier cities and environments by planting trees and reducing traffic in cities (SDG 11), reduce diseases caused by non-communicable diseases such as obesity and sedentary lifestyles (SDG 3) and curb climate change, to which we contribute by creating green spaces around the world (SDG 13).
The green legacy of this latest edition of Healthy Cities will be the initiative's largest to date and will go to five reforestation projects in cities and damaged ecosystems in Spain, Poland an Mexico and, for the first time, will also be present in Senegal, in this case, with the project that the Jane Goodall Institute is developing in the region of Kédougou, in the southeast of Senegal. This reforestation project contributes to the protection of this habitat populated by chimpanzees in critical danger of extinction, as well as to the fight against climate change.
