Greece is a European-Union country, of around 10 million people, located in the southeast part of Europe. The economy is recovering from a long period of deep recession, due to the economic crisis that started in 2008. The economic problems greatly influenced the structure and resources of the healthcare system of the country. In addition to the economic challenges, the country has been facing a refugee crisis, characterized by many overcrowded hotspots and tensions with neighboring Turkey. The COVID-19 outbreak arrived in Greece on 26 February 2020, at the time that Athens had declared a state of emergency at the Greek/Turkish border. From this point in time the government enforced a series of measurements, aiming to contain the epidemic and avoid the collapse of the healthcare system. The vast majority of the general population complied to the measures and consequently Greece’s death toll was low. The impacts of the outbreak are expected to be, as everywhere worldwide, multifaceted and to affect many parts of the economic, social and political life of the country.

This scoping study aims to explore the relationships between urban green spaces (UGSs) and the onset, remission and recovery of cancer. We followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) extension for scoping reviews (protocol published in 2018). Eligibility criteria for papers were: (1) to be concerned with UGSs, (2) reporting effects of UGSs on cancer-related outcomes including direct or indirect measures, (3) reporting randomized controlled trials, prospective cohort studies, case studies, observational studies, non-comparative studies, (4) in English or French. The search covered primary studies in the published and unpublished (grey) literatures searching by hand and electronic databases (MEDLINE, Green File, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature and ScienceDirect). Among 1703 records screened by two reviewers independently, 29 were included for qualitative synthesis. We classify the cancers concerned and the effects reported i.e., protective effect, risk or without association. The most investigated cancers are bladder, breast and lung cancer. Our study also identified contributing factors and their mediating effects between UGSs and cancer. Even though the strength of the evidence of the associations between UGSs and cancer is still weak due to the low number of studies and their design, results highlight the wide variety of possible mediating factors between the use of green spaces and cancer occurrence, remission and/or prevention. Knowledge gaps and future research perspectives should be oriented to qualitative research on protective factors with an attention to equity in UGS access and use.

Health impact assessment (HIA) is a prospective decision-making aid tool that aims to improve the quality of policies, programmes or projects through recommendations that promote health. It identifies how and through which pathways a decision can impact a wide range of health determinants and seeks to define the distribution of effects within populations, thereby raising the issue of equity. HIA was introduced to the WHO European Healthy Cities Network as one of its four core themes during the Phase IV (2004–08). Here we present an evaluation of the use of HIA during Phase V (2009–13), where HIA was linked with the overarching theme of health and health equity in all local policies and a requirement regarding capacity building. The evaluation was based on 10 case studies contributed by 9 Healthy Cities in five countries (France, Hungary, Italy, Spain and the UK). A Realist Evaluation framework was used to collect and aggregate data obtained through three methods: an HIA factors analysis, a case-study template analysis using Nvivo software and a detailed questionnaire. The main conclusion is that HIA significantly helps promote Health in All Policies (HiAP) and sustainability in Healthy Cities. It is recommended that all Healthy City candidates to Phase VI (2014–18) of the WHO Healthy Cities European Network effectively adopt HIA and HiAP.

L’agriculture urbaine (AU) occupe une place importante dans l’économie des pays en voie de développement. À Dakar (Sénégal), elle assure 70 % de la demande en légumes ainsi que la création de milliers d’emplois directs et indirects. Malgré ce rôle économique et social très important, l’agriculture urbaine à Dakar est toutefois confrontée à deux problèmes majeurs : l’insécurité foncière et l’accès à l’eau. Pour faire face à ces contraintes, les producteurs ont recours à des pratiques qui ne sont pas sans conséquence sur l’environnement, leur santé et celle des populations. L’objectif de cette étude est d’analyser les impacts sanitaires de ces pratiques agricoles dans un contexte d’urbanisation continue. Au terme de ce travail, cette recherche révèle que les pratiques agricoles observées dans les Niayes (zone agricole) de Dakar ont d’une part d’énormes impacts sur la santé des agriculteurs et des populations environnantes et d’autre part qu’à moyen terme ces impacts seront accentués par la forte urbanisation de la région. En effet, les pratiques agricoles actuelles dans la gestion de l’eau et l’utilisation des pesticides mises en perspective avec les modifications inhérentes à la forte urbanisation risquent de bouleverser les synergies spatiales existantes dans les systèmes de production en milieu urbain.

The new One Health approach proposes to view the human-animal-ecosystems relations as a continuum. This systemic approach proves very valuable when examining the links between wooded green spaces in urban areas and the health of city dwellers (more than half of the world population). These links and their diversity and complexity are now beginning to be adequately documented by the scientific literature. Some benefits and risks for human health can now be better analysed enabling areas for useful action in the future to be identified.