Benidorm formalizes its adhesion to ‘Xarxa Salut’ to promote healthy behaviors among citizens

Benidorm City Council is now officially a member of the ‘Xarxa Salut’, a network of municipalities involved in promoting healthy environments and lifestyle habits to improve the general health of citizens, within the V Health Plan 2022-2030 of the Valencian Community. The mayor of the city, Toni Pérez, received this Tuesday the accreditation as a member of this network from the hands of the general director of Public Health of the Generalitat Valenciana, Ruth Usó, in an event in which the councillor for Health, Ana Pellicer, also participated, along with other members of the municipal Corporation; numerous representatives of the Department of Health of the Marina Baixa, headed by the manager, Pascual Pastor; coordinators and management staff of the four health centres in Benidorm, as well as members of civic and social-health associations in the town.

The Benidorm City Council approved in a plenary session last January to become part of the ‘Xarxa Salut’, to improve the level of health and reduce health inequalities, with specific actions from the Administration and counting on citizen participation. After joining the network and the preparatory meetings, the City Council's assembly hall has been the scene of the formal act of joining this project, in which the objectives and development phases of the project have been made known to the public, as well as the importance of it being an intersectoral body, in which the City Council, the health sector and citizens participate to achieve the objectives set in terms of the development of these healthy policies.

Now, once this accreditation has been received, the next step will be the appointment by the City Council of a reference person, a participation space and the promoter group ‘Xarxa Salut’ to work on the actions and proposals, after which surveys will be drawn up on the health situation in the town and a map of the assets that promote health. In the next stage, the different actions agreed by the participating social agents will be designed and implemented, while in the fifth and final stage, the results will be evaluated, before agreeing and designing new actions in the area of ​​health.

The director of the Benidorm Public Health Centre, José Vicente Pascual, together with the nurses specialised in health promotion Marcos Espina and Ana Isabel Gallango, were the first to intervene in the act of adhesion to explain that “being healthy is not only not being sick, but having healthy conditions and habits of life” that are conditioned by genetic factors, but also by others such as the practice of physical exercise, healthy eating, the environment, etc.

For his part, the manager of the Marina Baixa Health Department has also delved into this issue, pointing out that “if we invest in health, we will invest less in illness”. Pascual Pastor has stated that the health department of the region “will provide all the means and collaboration without barriers” to facilitate the actions determined by this participation body, considering that this ‘Xarxa Salut’ “will allow us to join forces without the need to duplicate activities” and that “if Benidorm gains in health, the gain is for the entire region”.

The next to speak, before handing the mayor the accreditation, was the director general of Public Health of the Generalitat. During her speech, Ruth Usó highlighted that in Benidorm “there is already an exceptional environment” for promoting health, about aspects such as the urban layout itself, the good air quality, the network of bicycle lanes, the bio-healthy devices in parks and public spaces, etc., but she went on to say that “now we have to look at formulas to get the maximum performance and the maximum benefit from all of this”.

She also thanked the City Council “for its involvement in carrying out actions to improve the health of citizens” and recognize the importance of promoting health “in a health system as stressed as the current one” and in a society “in which the population pyramid, where there are more and more older citizens” and who, therefore, start with more underlying diseases than younger people.

Finally, the general director has defined this project as “a laboratory of experiences and an area of ​​social innovation” and has clarified that “although the results will be seen in the medium or long term, it is one of the best inheritances that we can leave to future generations”.

The Mayor of Benidorm, Toni Pérez, closed the event with a speech that began by committing to work. “Events like today's come to make work for us all,” he said. The first words of the mayor were also to publicly thank the councillor Marciano Gómez for having “made mental health a priority for the Ministry of Health.”

Then, the mayor of Benidorm recalled that Benidorm “represents 40% of the population of the Marina Baixa” and that, therefore, “in terms of health, it is a territory where it is important to intervene, to improve our region as a whole.” He announced that as members of this ‘Xarxa Salut’, the City Council “is going to do everything in our power to ensure that the health of our citizens is increasingly better,” a job that, he acknowledged, “must be a choral one and to which all citizens are already invited.”

Pérez recalled that in recent years “many investments have been made in Benidorm, to improve our health and make it much healthier” and that “now, with ‘Xarxa Salut’, we are at the optimal moment to go one step further”.