International Network of Safe Communities

Spectacular results have been achieved with programmes informing the public at the community level. For this reason, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends working according to the “Safe Community” concept.

Within the framework of their efforts to promote health, the WHO has also developed special programmes for accident prevention. Community programmes offer the advantage of quickly achieving good results with relatively few resources. A very high density of communication can be rapidly realised through utilisation of existing local structures. After the impressive successes of a Swedish programme, the WHO established the programme “Community Safety Promotion” in 1989, which has since been administered by the Institute for Social Medicine of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

The KfV entered into a co-operation agreement in 1999 with this WHO collaborating centre to become an “Affiliate WHO Collaborating Centre on Community Safety Promotion”. Based on the success of this concept, KfV hopes to contribute to making accident prevention a standard component of health promotion at the regional and community levels within Austria, in other European countries and throughout the world. The activities of KfV for this international network to date include hosting of the 9th international “Conference on Safe Communities" in 1999, holding of a “Travelling Seminar on Community Safety Promotion" in 2002 and ongoing cooperation in the programme committees of the annual conferences.