Hong Kong, London and Madrid have all topped a global study of cities tackling cardiovascular disease.
The City Heartbeat Index, published by the World Heart Federation, ranks 50 cities globally on how they protect their resident’s health with a variety of measures, including banning junk food advertising and tackling air pollution.
Hong Kong was ranked as the top city in the world, with low-emission zones and smog vacuum cleaners.
London came second and scored highly after introduced city-wide health policies around unhealthy diets, tobacco and air pollution.
While Madrid was ranked third, closely followed by Berlin and New York.
The report found wealthier cities have an advantage in terms of resources and data, and as a result also have increased life expectancy and healthier ageing.
For example, the report notes cities like Helsinki and London have a healthy life expectancy at age 60.
But the study also finds middle and low-income countries have limited funding, infrastructure and social determinants, such as employment and education.
The president-elect of the World Heart Federation, Dr. Jagat Narula said increasing urbanisation has created various lifestyle, environment and socio-economic challenges in an interview.
Dr. Narula added a combination of high pollution levels, working behind a desk all day and limited access to green spaces can increase the risk of obesity, hypertension and diabetes.
He also told me the high costs of living in many cities, along with social isolation and a fast-paced lifestyle will also impact your health.
Dr. Narula said the most successful cities in the study are all collecting data from a variety of sources to help the authorities understand the issues at hand and have good access to healthcare.
According to the report, only 22% of the cities ranked have data on cholesterol levels, and only 14% have figures on trans-fat consumption, which it adds could create barriers to developing informed health policies.
“In this report, we have tried to measure health for everyone as thoroughly as possible,” he added.
“And this should inspire people to look at their health differently, so they can live in a healthier environment and adapt a healthier lifestyle.
“It’s a very comprehensive report, and hopefully it will get a lot of people thinking.”
Glyn Richards, director of sustainability at healthcare company Bupa said the findings from the City Heartbeat Index illustrate the inextricable link between the health of the people and the environment in an email.
“We support the collection and reporting of this type of data on cities as these are invaluable learnings and the more insights, we can glean the more targeted we can be about the interventions needed,” added Richards.
“We can support people’s heart health and their wellbeing by creating cities that bring people closer to nature, have clean air to breathe and cooler routes that they can take during heatwaves,” he said.
“Through our Healthy Cities programme, at Bupa we are on a mission to make cities healthier through city interventions such as greening initiatives and encouraging people to lead a healthier more active lifestyle.”
The study was commissioned by Novartis and independently conducted by Economist Impact.
“The City Heartbeat Index shows that the many efforts by cities – where over half of the world’s population resides – on heart health is visible and increasingly important,” said Dr Vasilisa Sazonov, therapeutic area head, CRM international at Novartis in a statement.
“There are opportunities to improve data collection at the city level including prioritising CVD risk factors that have typically been overlooked such as high cholesterol.”
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