Box 3:

Comprehensive Approaches to Consulting Local People

Lodz consults widely with a diversity of citizens, using a range of surveys to gather information that can inform health-related planning:

“The opinions of the inhabitants on important issues such as lifestyles, health-related behaviours, level of satisfaction with health care and other services, public transport, access to culture and sports facilities, were acquired in a HEPRO survey*… of 1000 adult residents of Lodz; a survey on a representative group of elderly citizens; a survey on the clients of nursing homes and day-care centres for the elderly; and a study on health behaviours of the pupils of Health Promoting Schools in Lodz… Information collected in this way allows us to adjust our action for health to the actual needs of the inhabitants.”

Dimitrovgrad uses more informal approaches to gather community perspectives and views, including questionnaires, polls, meetings, and public hearings—and also prioritizes feedback:

“The population’s opinion about public health problems… is found out through polls. Questionnaires are published in mass media and handed out in hospitals, polyclinics, social service organisations etc. Children and teenagers are asked to fill in forms at school… or they may take the questionnaires home (if the questions are for grown-ups). Sometimes polls are organized by experts… in the street, on the phone, or by visiting people at their homes… The population’s attitude to the social policy of the authorities is found out at personal meetings of the city officials with citizens [which] take place monthly in neighbourhoods of the city, according to a plan published in newspapers. The most important documents… must pass public hearings. The feedback is provided by publishing results in the local mass media. If it is children who answered the questions, the results are given to their parents at parents’ meetings at school.”

*HEPRO was an EU-funded project (2005–2007) that brought together Healthy Cities in the Baltic Sea Region with the aim of helping to put public health issues on the political agenda. Through developing tools for use in health planning, conducting a survey to describe health conditions, both regionally and locally, and developing educational programs.