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From community garden to steering committee: Cities@Heart sees Cork's approach to urban heart health first-hand On 22 September 2026, the Cities@Heart coordinators and several project partners spent a day in Cork. They met local community leaders, health service managers, and researchers to see how the city is tackling cardiovascular disease (CVD) at neighbourhood level. The day ended with a hybrid Steering Committee meeting, so the whole consortium could take part. Where the

Don't Miss a Beat: how Cities@Heart and its partners marked World Heart Day 2026 World Heart Day (29 September) is a global moment to raise awareness of cardiovascular disease (CVD), the world's leading cause of death. This year, partners across the Cities@Heart consortium marked the day with a webinar in Belfast, a public campaign in İzmir, and a Dress Red Day in Utrecht, alongside a week-long online campaign from the project. Why World Heart Day

Birmingham City's Director of Public Health, Sally Burns, presented Cities@Heart at the 11th Global Conference of the Alliance for Healthy Cities (AFHC 2026) in Sydney, Australia. The conference ran from 1 to 3 September and marked 40 years since the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion. WHO Alliance for Healthy Cities Conference The three-day conference was hosted by the UNSW Cities Institute and Healthy Cities Australia. It brought together mayors, policymakers, practitioner

From Safe Hearts to Healthy Cities: Cities@Heart Sets Out Its Approach at ESC Congress. Speaking on ESC TV Connect at this year's ESC Congress, Cities@Heart Project Director Dipak Kotecha, Industry Lead Franck Perraudin (Novartis), and Donna Fitzsimons, Professor of Nursing at Queen's University Belfast, set out how the project intends to turn the European Union's Safe Hearts Plan into practical change for Europe's cities. Adopted by the European Commission in December 2025,

Bringing Our Work to the Global Cardiology Community. The European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Congress is the largest annual gathering of cardiovascular health professionals in the world, and this year, it brought together close to 34,000 participants in the field. Cities@Heart made its presence known. Over the course of the event in Munich, our team took part in a series of activities designed to strengthen the project internally and share our work with the wider cardiovas

New video series highlights how seven WHO Healthy Cities will strengthen local action to prevent cardiovascular disease through the Cities@Heart project. How can cities play a leading role in reducing the burden of cardiovascular disease? A new series of videos from the Cities@Heart project gives the floor to representatives from the participating WHO European Healthy Cities, who share how they plan to use the project to strengthen local interventions, foster collaboration an

Members of Cities@Heart were in İzmir on 4 June 2026 for a stakeholder meeting. The day kicked off with a warm welcome from the mayor of İzmir, Dr Cemil Tugay. Presentations were then given from the Izmir Municipality, members of Cities@Heart and other stakeholders. The programme showcased Izmir Metropolitan Municipality’s institutional capacity, field-level implementation, and collaborative approach to advancing cardiovascular health and wellbeing in urban environments. It a

A video series of three short clips featuring Project Leader, Dipak Kotecha, and Industry Lead, Franck Perraudin, introducing Cities@Heart are now available on the Cities@Heart YouTube channel. The videos talk about Cities@Heart in the contexts of "Why cardiovascular disease is so important", "How important are communities in addressing CVD" and "How Cities@Heart will be driving impact over 5 years". Check out the links below and subscribe to our YouTube channel to get notifi

The ESC Spring Summit is an annual strategic meeting organised by the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), bringing together leaders from National Cardiac Societies and key figures across the cardiovascular community. Held at the European Heart House in Sophia Antipolis, France, the summit serves as a platform where ideas are translated into concrete strategies aimed at improving cardiovascular health across Europe and beyond. The 2026 meeting on 5 and 6 March explored how a

A new public-private collaboration aims to improve urban health and equality by implementing and evaluating evidence-based strategies that improve awareness, prevention, detection and management of cardiovascular disease. Key takeaways: Cardiovascular disease remains a major concern in cities, with poor outcomes and high societal cost often driven by unequal access to healthcare. A pan-European consortium of 34 international partners launch an ambitious project to reduce th