Planning for health and creating healthy public policy has been one of the main priorities of the Healthy Cities Project since the early 1990s. The Healthy City Foundation of Pécs (Hungary) - as one of the founding cities of the Healthy Cities Project in Europe - has been involved in all phases of health profiling, health planning and health development planning throughout the years. The experiences of the Healthy Cities Project have strengthened the recognition that the decisions of elected local decision-making bodies are generally based on daily demands and not on long-term plans or concepts. The decision-making process has only one type of filtering system (operated by the city notary), which is for the preliminary legal control of the decisions to be made. Quality of life, health and equity are not considered in the system as a filtering issue. This article reports the experiences of the unique approach of health-orientated planning and decision making in the City of Pécs by using the method of health impact assessment (HIA) as a 'health filter'. It describes the initiative, the success of training and the feasibility of creating a health filter to support the local decision-making process.

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The City of Pécs, a founding member, has participated in the World Health Organization European Healthy Cities Network (WHO-EHCN) since 1986. Each WHO-EHCN city prepares a city health profile (CHP) through which it supports local health-related activities. The first CHP of Pécs was carried out in 1996. The aim of more recent research has been to implement a comprehensive review of the first CHP and to make a comparative analysis between the results of the former and the updated CHPs. The data were received from different databases and a telephone survey. The review showed improvement in those areas that can be influenced through the measures of the city authorities. The survey showed that both the ratio of smokers and the amount of cigarettes smoked had decreased so that the ratio of regular smokers became the lowest among the youngest age group. The number of alcohol consumers increased, while the amount of alcohol consumed dropped slightly, meaning that alcohol consumption per capita decreased overall. The comparative analysis highlighted unhealthy diets, insufficient sleep duration and physical inactivity becoming significant health risk factors. To avoid a 'reinventing the wheel' situation, it would be worth comparing the results of health and lifestyle surveys of other WHO-EHCN cities and eventually jointly devise the best solutions.