Construction of a City Prevention Spatial Unit System for Epidemic Emergencies: A Reflection on a Healthy City Environment During Public Health Emergencies

Abstract

There are three key elements in the emergence of infectious diseases, namely, sources of infection, transmission routes, and susceptible  populations. Early urban public health campaigns were committed to eliminating the source of infection by improving the urban physical environment. In recent years, the Healthy Cities movement has focused on promoting the physical activity of residents to strengthen the health and well-being of susceptible people. Nevertheless, there is often a lack of effective training in cutting off the routes of infectious diseases. In the present study,  the current “epidemic war”in China was analyzed, and the “isolation-treatment-recovery”response measures in Chinese cities for epidemic prevention and control were summarized. In addition, the role of administrative and spatial units at the “city-district-community”levels, as well as lessons  learned to improve the Healthy Cities movement, were discussed. It concludes that a better healthy city requires three perspectives of thinking: The  first is how to effectively control the epidemic in a sudden outbreak. The second is adopting humanistic thinking by focusing on life support and the  quality of life of residents in the context of the long-term impacts of the outbreak. The third is to strengthen spatial attribute thinking as part of the  healthy city indicator system. Therefore, the idea of creating a healthy city epidemic prevention spatial unit system was proposed. At the city level,  a “city-district-community”multi-level linkage is needed to strengthen epidemic prevention capacity and establish a resource distribution mechanism. At the community level, on a spatial scale that satisfies basic isolation and epidemic prevention management requirements, it is necessary to  establish a support system that serves basic human life to ensure the health and well-being of residents during epidemic control.