Vital Stories

To change people’s attitudes and behaviors around seat belt use, the city of Bandung, Indonesia, and the Bloomberg Philanthropies Initiative for Global Road Safety (BIGRS) launched the latest #KlikBiarSelamat (Click for Safety) campaign, focusing on the importance of seat belt use by all vehicle occupants. The campaigned marks Bandung’s second as part of BIGRS, after the first addressed proper helmet use in June 2016.

It was a busy week for the Partnership for Healthy Cities, with four participating cities—Kigali, São Paulo, Fortaleza and Bogotá—announcing the public health policies they’re pursuing under the project, with support from Vital Strategies, Bloomberg Philanthropies and the World Health Organization (WHO).

Alcohol is a major determinate of ill health and a leading cause of disability worldwide. The human and economic burden of drinking and driving, or by the alcohol-related conditions like liver cancer, are staggering. More than 3.3 million are killed people globally each year from alcohol-related causes.

On World Diabetes Day, we join the International Diabetes Federation and other partners to raise awareness and accelerate progress on the diabetes epidemic and the spread of obesity around the world.

With the majority of the world’s population now living in cities, urban centers are uniquely positioned to make vital health care improvements at scale, through data collection, infrastructure changes, mass media to influence policy and behavior change and more.

In a rapidly urbanizing world, the built environment of cities and social factors can greatly affect vector habitat and the risk of vector-borne disease transmission.

Vital Strategies has held a four-day anti-tobacco industry social media advocacy workshop in Indonesia, with advocates learning how to create effective campaigns to counter the industry’s practices.

Medellin, Cali and Bogota sent food policy experts to a Partnership for Healthy Cities workshop last week to pick up tips from Vital Strategies and from each other about dealing with soaring obesity problems—especially among children.

Vital Strategies joined our partners in health and human rights in denouncing the appointment of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe as a World Health Organization (WHO) Goodwill Ambassador through a joint statement. Shortly afterwards, the appointment was revoked.