More than 55% of world’s population, 4.2B people, live in urban areas; this is expected to reach 70% by 2050. However, cities often struggle with prioritizing agendas to ensure physical and mental well-being for their citizens where they live, eat, shop, work, and play.

Considering the pandemic, the need to empower consumers to lead healthy lives is critical as NCDs are rising faster in cities than elsewhere. However, cities cannot solve this challenge alone and need support of the private sector, NGOs and academia.

The Healthy Cities and Communities initiative aims to improve people’s well-being by enabling them to live longer and fuller lives in urban centers. Efforts to-date have catalyzed the creation of the Healthy Cities & Communities Playbook as a roadmap for change for public and private sector actors. Additionally, tech-enabled public-private partnerships catalyzed in Jersey City and Austin, USA, and Mumbai, India, are positively impacting the lives of citizens via improved nutritional choices, physical activity, and sanitation.

Our future goals:

• Influence policy makers and leaders at the national level to prioritize citizen health and well-being in urban centers.


• Support pathways to scale efforts by leveraging the frameworks from the Healthy Cities and Communities Playbook and learnings from the three pilot cities.


• Create a City Peer Network to share best practices with multi-stakeholders to strengthen and sustain impact.