Victorian 'Safe Communities' Information Kit

Section 1 - History of World Health Organisation’s ‘Safe Communities Movement’

The ‘Safe Communities’ concept was developed at the First World Conference on Accident and Injury Prevention held in Stockholm, Sweden in September 1989. The Manifesto for Safe Communities, the resolution of the conference, states that "All human beings have an equal right to health and safety." This is a fundamental aspect of the World Health Organisation's (WHO) Health for All strategy and for the WHO Global Program on Accident Prevention and Injury Control.

The United Nations stated in their 1994 report on human development, that safety is a fundamental right and an essential condition for the sustainable development of societies. (United Nations Development Program, 1994).

Development of the community orientated program approach

The ‘Safe Communities’ movement had its birth in Sweden. As early as the late 1960s, interdisciplinary scientific research programs were developed at Lund University in Sweden engaging sociologists, anatomists, physiologists, epidemiologists, architects and specialists in systems analysis and social medicine. As a result of epidemiological and analytical studies, the group became engaged in community oriented programs to prevent accidents and injuries.

In the early seventies, a community health unit was established in Skaraborg County to plan and coordinate health and safety promotion for the region including Falköping and Lindköping municipalities. The Falköping Accident Prevention Program reported a fall of 34% in the incidence of injuries among preschool children in the period 1978 to 1991/2, which inspired the local health authority in Lindköping to start a similar safe community program and the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare to start a Health For All program on injury prevention.

A special unit was established in the Department of Public Health Sciences of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm to spread the ideas emanating from the Falköping community program to the whole of Sweden. The Unit serves as the collaborative centre for research and advice to aspiring Swedish safe communities. In September 1989 the Department of Public Health Sciences of the Karolinska Institute was appointed as a WHO Collaborating Centre on Community Safety Promotion with a brief to establish a world Network of Safe Communities.