1. Introduction & Background
The Healthy Cities approach was initiated by the World Health Organization (WHO). It is based on the concept that the social, economic and physical environment is the key to the health of city dwellers and aims to cope with health issues that have emerged with urbanisation. In Hong Kong, the first Healthy Cities Project was initiated in Sai Kung District in 1997.
The AFHC, founded in October 2003, is a network founded on the international efforts on Healthy Cities worldwide. Its current membership comprises over 200 cities and organisations. The China Hong Kong Chapter of the AFHC was established in September 2007.
Since 2004, the Global Conference of the AFHC has been organised biennially except in 2020 due to the COVID-19 epidemic. The 6th Global Conference of the AFHC was held in Hong Kong from 29th October to 1st November, 2014 with “Health in All Policies” as the main theme.
The China Hong Kong Chapter of the AFHC will organise the upcoming Global Conference of the AFHC, namely, the 9th Global Conference of the AFHC, again. The main theme of the conference will be “Smarter Healthy Cities beyond COVID-19”.
2. Mechanism for the Best COVID-19 Global Community Project Awards
We have set up TEN “Best COVID-19 Global Community Project Awards” for the ten presentations with the highest scores.
*Award Certificates will be sent to your registered shortly after the conference.
3. Eligibility
To join the oral presentation and competition, the candidate must submit an abstract.
- Abstracts should be submitted using a standard electronic abstract form.
- One candidate can only submit one abstract.
- The content of the abstract must be related to COVID-19 community projects or initiatives in a country or area. The candidate must indicate clearly the country or area.
- The body of the abstract should be organised as follows:
1
| Provide the title and background of the project/ initiative. |
2
| State the objective of the project/ initiative. |
3
| Describe the programme content |
4
| Summarise the findings/ observation |
5
| Describe the application |
Abstracts should not exceed 350 words.
All candidates with their abstracts accepted for oral presentation must register for the conference.
All candidates are welcome including commercial companies but tobacco and alcohol companies are prohibited.
Candidates whose abstracts are accepted for oral presentation will be invited to give oral presentations in Symposium II.
4. Assessment criteria and scoring process
| Stage | Description |
Judging panel |
Comprising representatives from the academia, professionals and experts in relevant fields and sectors is formed to appraise the abstracts based on this assessment criteria. This stage will decide which 15-17 abstracts will be selected for oral presentation but will not contribute to the total scores.
|
Conference Participants' Online Voting |
Voting by conference participants solely will decide the TEN winners of the “Best COVID-19 Global Community Project Awards.
|
| Assessment criteria | Description | Weighting |
Relevance of the project/ initiative to the control and prevention of COVID-19
| Whether the project effectively applied preventive and control measures of COVID-19, e.g. surveillance, case investigation and management, quarantine measures, port health measures, infection control measures, vaccination, risk communication, mental health and psychosocial support, addressing health inequalities | 20% |
Programme design
| Whether it is well-planned and well-structured with good parameters to evaluate the outcomes. | 20% |
Creativity and innovation
| Whether the project is an innovative approach rather than conventional approach with high degree of creativity. | 20% |
Impact of project
| Whether the project has led to changes of public policies and/or service delivery models and/or health status of the population. | 20% |
Overall presentation
| Is the content clear, concise and non “jargonistic”, will the oral presentation likely to be well-structured and audience engaging. | 20% |
The respective candidates will be invited for oral presentation in Symposium II.
If any of the candidates cannot conduct the oral presentation, the one with the next highest score will be invited.
If more than one candidate submits abstracts on COVID-19 community projects related to a single country or administrative region, only the candidate with the highest score attained from the judging process of the judging panel will have a chance to give an oral presentation in the conference.
All conference participants can vote for their favourite oral presentations after listening to all the presentations in Symposium II.
Voting will take place during and close shortly after Symposium II.
Each participant can vote for a maximum of TEN presentations through an online platform.
For the weighting of the total score of each oral presentation, it will solely be made up of the voting results of conference participants.
5. Important Dates（Hong Kong Time (HKT), UTC +8）
Deadline for abstract submission
| 25 October |
Notification of Acceptance
| 27 October |
Date of oral presentation (15-17 candidates)
| 5 November |
Voting by conference participants
| |
Organiser to compile the scores, identify and announce the award winners
|
6. Rundown（Hong Kong Time (HKT), UTC +8）
Time | Presentation |
11:45 – 12:05
| Presentation on achievements in the local COVID-19 response by representative(s) of Hong Kong |
12:05 – 13:30
| Oral presentation by 15-17 candidates, each taking 2 minutes for presentation and 3 minutes for questions and answers |
12:05 – 13:45
| Online platform opens for voting by conference participants |
13:45
| Voting closes |
16:20-16:35
| China Hong Kong Chapter, AFHC : Best COVID-19 Global Community Project Awards Ceremony |