Themes / Health
Health: towards a city without sickness or accidents
Where Geneva’s hospital stands today, Verity finds a HUG-Centre, where people come to refuel on affection. When she asks where the sick are treated, Smaranda answers with a simple principle: supply and demand. As people stay healthy, the demand for treatment shrinks, and the hospital shrinks with it.
The ideas below are the steps on that path. Some have already been achieved elsewhere; one or two are still open research questions.
- No one killed or badly hurt on Geneva’s roads Done somewhere Geneva has one of the highest rates of serious road casualties in Switzerland. Helsinki has shown that zero is reachable. HEA-01
- Very few people want to leave life early Research frontier Suicide is the leading cause of death for people under 50 in Switzerland, and assisted suicides are rising every year. HEA-02
- Far fewer chronic diseases Engineering and scale Chronic diseases cause about 80% of Swiss health costs, and premiums keep rising. In Geneva, one adult in three has high blood pressure. HEA-03
- A HUG-Centre where people refuel on affection Political will The former hospital is replaced by a place for human warmth. Social prescribing and anti-loneliness policies already exist elsewhere. HEA-04 · page in preparation
- Babies born outside hospitals Done somewhere Home births and midwife-led birth centres are common in the Netherlands and exist across Europe. HEA-05 · page in preparation
- Radiant, healthy older people Engineering and scale Longevity hotspots and healthy-ageing research show how to add healthy years, not only years. HEA-06 · page in preparation
- Everyone learns how to stay healthy Done somewhere Online teachers already show people how to look after their own health; schools have yet to catch up. HEA-07 · page in preparation
- Almost no sickness at all Research frontier No city has done it, but some individuals live long lives almost without illness. The frontier question: how far can prevention, education, environment and medicine take us? HEA-08 · page in preparation