The Beneficial Evaluation of the Healthy City Construction in China

BACKGROUND Creating healthy cities promotes socio-economic development, thus, the creation of such cities has been receiving more attention from the Chinese government and the Chinese people. In the current study, the intention was to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the creation of healthy cities in Henan province in central China. METHODS We randomly selected 18 cities (7 healthy cities and 11 non-healthy cities) in middle regions of China in 2013 and established evaluation indices to evaluate the beneficial effects by horizontal and vertical comparison analyses. RESULTS Creating the healthy cities promoted health service, economic development, spiritual and ecological success. This was achieved by constructing cities and changing work style among the officials and establishment of patriotic health organizations. CONCLUSION This is the first comprehensive, in-depth, appraisal of the healthy cities in China. We suggest that creating the healthy cities should be promoted a larger extend world-wide since it is beneficial at many levels.