At the National Institute of Public Health (NIJZ), we have been monitoring various health indicators for each of the 212 Slovenian municipalities for several years in the "Health in the Municipality" project. Once a year, we prepare publications for each individual municipality, as we are aware of the importance of the local environment for the health of the residents and want to encourage decision-makers at the local level to be more active in the field of health. Health is one of the most important elements of the quality of life in a given environment. They are also aware of this in the leading Slovenian project for monitoring development at the local level, Zlati kamen, with which NIJZ has been cooperating since 2018. This year, for the first time, NIJZ and Zlati kamen will award the Municipality of Health award to a municipality that recognized health as an important value and in the past year stood out for its activities to improve the health of its residents.
The municipality of health is not the municipality with the healthiest citizens
Health is a person's greatest value. It is the foundation of the development and well-being of the individual and the entire society. It is created where people live and work, where they socialize and spend their free time. Responsibility for health is therefore not only a matter for each individual and national policy, but to a large extent also the responsibility of decision-makers at the local level. With this campaign, we don't just want to reward the municipality where the citizens are the healthiest, because health is the result of many factors. With the new Municipal health award, we want to encourage local communities in every Slovenian municipality to take an active attitude towards the health of their residents and to discover and spread the best practices in this area.
We chose the municipality that did the most to improve the health of its residents
The selection of the Municipality of Health takes place according to predefined criteria. Among them, in addition to the health indicators of Health in the municipality, the interest and activity of the municipality to improve the health of its residents is key. In doing so, we took into account certain activities (municipal strategy and action plan for health, operation of the local health group, involvement in projects and other activities related to health) and data on the share of the municipal budget dedicated to the field of health in the broadest sense of the word. Each of the nine regional units of NIJZ then selected one regional finalist from among the municipalities in their health region, and the expert committee then selected the winning municipality. The expert committee for the selection of the Municipality of Health is an independent professional body that includes representatives of the NIJZ, the Ministry of Health, the Oncology Institute of Ljubljana, the Office for Macroeconomic Analysis and Development, and Zlate kamna.
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