At the meeting, representatives of the member cities presented the current situation in their local communities after the period of the COVID-19 crisis, new achievements related to the topic of healthy aging, exchanged experiences, and determined the topics that the Task Force will focus on in the future.

In addition to Rijeka, the meeting was attended by the representatives of the cities of Horsens, Brno, Novi Sad, Barcelona and Udine, as well as representatives of the World Health Organisation. Many other cities joined the meeting online. The City of Rijeka was represented by Jadran Mandekić, project manager of the “Rijeka – Healthy City” project.

the Task Force on Healthy Aging

During the meeting, the activity of the World Health Organisation was presented to the participants related to healthy aging in the last decade and the achievements of the Task Force in the previous period, and then the cities presented the current situation at local level and new achievements related to the topic of healthy aging. The methodology for creating, or updating, the profile of healthy aging at local level was also presented. Among the key topics of the meeting was the response of cities to crisis situations, so that, among other things, the response to the great earthquake that had happened in 1976, with the epicentre near the town of Gemona near Udine, and the role of civil protection in crisis situations were presented. At the end of the meeting, a discussion was held on the agenda for the future activity of the Task Force and coordination about the action plan for the period from 2023 to 2025.

The next meeting of the Task Force is scheduled for November 2023 in Utrecht, the Netherlands, and will be held as part of the large annual conference of the WHO European Healthy Cities Network.

The Task Force on Healthy Aging is the longest-standing thematic group of the WHO European Healthy Cities Network, and the City of Rijeka has been a member since its foundation in 2004.