Side Event: Health in the City: Enhancing Trust at Times of Crises
How to engage with religious leaders and faith communities in your city when responding to immediate and longer-term threats? This session provided lessons learned from COVID-19, which inform new collaborations in Urban Health and resilience.
Objectives: SDG 11: Highlight European best practice and lessons learned from Public Health & Faith leadership cooperation in enhancing trust and reducing hesitancy during COVID-19. SDG 6, 7, 9, 11, 17: Offer directions for wider engagement of Faith leadership in European Cities towards advancing the SDGs.
Background
A healthy city is one that continually creates and improves its physical and social environments and expands the community resources that enable people to mutually support each other in performing all the functions of life and developing to their maximum potential. COVID-19 is a good case study for illuminating the important role of municipalities in dealing with Global Public Health emergencies and the gaps in their preparedness for the next one.
Faith Leaders and local Faith-based organizations in Europe have been an asset in minimizing the effect of the pandemic and in enhancing preventative measures.
We learned in this Session best practices from several countries in Europe and discussed:
- Why in the COVID-19 response, engagement with faith leaders was important?
- How to engage with religious leaders and faith communities in different contexts when responding to immediate and longer-term threats?
- How to navigate and overcome challenges that come from engaging with faith leaders in pursuit of SDGs’ attainment?
Jerusalem Impact Vaccination Initiatve; Permanent Mission of Israel to the UN in Geneva; Permanent Mission of Germany to the UN in Geneva
