Nachhaltigkeitstalk: Gesundheit - eine Frage der Gerechtigkeit ?!

In the organizer's words:

A person's health is influenced by a wide variety of factors - the most well-known are infection, personal behavior such as smoking and heredity. Less attention has been paid to social factors such as educational opportunities, income or environmental influences. However, these also have a key influence on whether we fall ill and whether and how we recover.

Different forms of disadvantage reinforce and reinforce each other; the individual state of health is therefore also structurally determined.

These inequalities are also reflected in the cityscape. The health atlas published in 2020 by SoliMed e.V., which campaigns for solidarity-based access to medical care in Cologne, shows that there are striking differences between urban areas in terms of health burden and medical care. For example, while the districts of Chorweiler, Mülheim and Kalk have the highest incidence of illness and the city center and Lindenthal the lowest, the density of medical care in Lindenthal and the city center is among the highest in Cologne and in Chorweiler and Mülheim among the lowest.

The city of Cologne has also recognized the need to strengthen measures to improve the health opportunities of its residents. According to its city strategy, Cologne wants to ensure "access to healthcare, health promotion and prevention for all life situations". But how far do these measures go? What priority is given to improving health opportunities and preventing the development of diseases at city policy and administration level? What role do civil society actors play in this? And what progressive approaches do they bring to the pursuit of health justice?

We want to discuss this using the example of the Kalk district with the following guests:

• Gregor Bornes, member of SoliMed e.V. & managing director of gesundheitsladen köln e.V.
• Carina Liebeck, psychotherapist SoliMed e.V.
• Dr. Harald Rau, Head of Department for Social Affairs, Health and Housing of the City of Cologne
• Elizaveta Khan, Managing Director of In-Haus e.V.

The event is organized by Bündnis Kommunale Nachhaltigkeit Köln and sponsored by Stiftung Umwelt und Entwicklung NRW.