End of Commitment Report – Community Actions for a Healthy City Strategy

Name of Evaluator

Álex González Ruiz and Anabel Suso Araico

Email

madrid-spain@opengovpartnership.org

Member Name

Madrid, Spain

Action PlanAction plans are at the core of a government’s participation in OGP. They are the product of a co-creation process in which government and civil society jointly develop commitments to open governmen... Title

Action plan – Madrid, Spain, 2022 – 2023

CommitmentOGP commitments are promises for reform co-created by governments and civil society and submitted as part of an action plan. Commitments typically include a description of the problem, concrete action...

Community Actions for a Healthy City Strategy

Action

This commitment includes three lines of action:
– Promoting a compassionate community model, facilitating mourning, and helping to overcome the processes of loss, with information, awareness-raising activities, and community involvement in the promotion of empathetic attitudes and accompaniment in the processes of illness, taking society as the key driver of change, compassion as a transversal axis and the creation of care networks from the community.
– Addressing a strategy for suicide prevention, focusing on risk and protective factors and creating a comprehensive care network, promoting training, information, and awareness-raising activities.
– Develop pilot programs in educational centers that contribute to improving the quality of life of children in the city of Madrid through the acquisition of healthy habits related to nutrition and physical activity.

Problem

In Madrid, as in many other cities around the world, COVID-19 has affected people’s well-being and health not only in physical aspects but also in cognitive, emotional, and behavioral aspects.
The current strategy “Madrid a healthy city” is guided by the principles and methodologies of community health prevention and promotion, with the ultimate goal of increasing the capacity of individuals and communities to increase their control over the determinants of health and, consequently, to improve their health.
The commitment focuses on three issues: pandemic deaths and bereavement; suicide prevention; and childhood obesity.

1.1 What was the overall level of progress in the commitment implementation at the time of this assessment?

Substantial

Provide a brief explanation of your answer:

All of the proposed actions have been completed. The first type of actions and their implications in the field of citizen participationAccording to OGP’s Articles of Governance, citizen participation occurs when “governments seek to mobilize citizens to engage in public debate, provide input, and make contributions that lead to m... More are not so tangible but contribute to the generation of a citizen attitude more inclined to community involvement in relevant social issues. In this case, care for people in the process of bereavement.
Secondly, actions related to suicide prevention have had as a main result the forging of an alliance between the Madrid City Council and relevant stakeholders. It should also be mentioned the development of prevention plans, the deployment of awareness-raising media (including a website dedicated to suicide prevention), training activities, the community mapping of health assets, and the implementation of specific pilot workshops in schools.
Finally, it has been launched the COLEC pilot project in the previous academic year, in the implementation of a compendium of activities in collaboration with the educational community (workshops, games, etc.).

Provide evidence that supports and justifies your answer:

• Suicide Prevention Action Plan Of The Madrid City Council 2023-2024
• Suicide Prevention Action Plan Of The Madrid City Council 2022-2026
• Final Follow-Up Report On The Third Open Government Plan Of The Madrid City Council

1.2 Describe the main external or internal factors that impacted implementation of this commitment and how they were addressed (or not).

One of the keys to the implementation of the three main activities was the collaboration with a multitude of stakeholders. Regarding the first activity, 1690 public and 471 private resources were used; for the second, a close alliance was maintained with the “Foro de Empresas por Madrid” [Madrid Companies Forum] and the “Colegio Oficial de la Psicología de Madrid” [Official College of Psychology of Madrid], as well as with the schools where awareness-raising workshops were held. This has been essential for the development of the third and last activity, which required intense collaboration with the teaching staff, management, and parents of the various centers where the piloting was carried out.
Internally, these three activities have implied the involvement of various Madrid Salud professionals in the coordination and preparation of activities, attendance at training sessions, etc.

1.3 Was the commitment implemented as originally planned?

All of the commitment milestones were implemented as planned.

Provide a brief explanation of your answer:

Although some of the milestones will be ongoing until at least the end of 2023, as mentioned in the first section, the various milestones set out for each main activity can be considered to be broadly implemented. The only difference with respect to what was initially proposed in the design of the commitment is the implementation of two more actions framed within the second suicide prevention activity: the piloting of two workshops in different schools for pupils, one on “life skills” and the other on “prevention of bullying, cyberbullying and the promotion of good treatment”, which will be scaled up in the near future. This is a very positive development, as it facilitates the reach of the younger population.

Provide evidence for your answer:

• Third Open Government Plan Madrid City Council (2022-2023)
• Monitoring Report on the Third Open Government Plan of the Madrid City Council (December 2022)
• Final Follow-Up Report On The Third Open Government Plan Of The Madrid City Council

2.1.1. – Did the government disclose more information; improve the quality of the information (new or existing); improve the value of the information; improve the channels to disclose or request information or improve accessibility to information?

Yes

Degree of result:

Major

Explanation: In narrative form, what has been the impact on people or practice.

The dissemination and awareness-raising activities (talks, colloquiums, workshops, etc.) that make up the commitment have entailed the transmission of information regarding transcendental aspects of citizens’ daily lives and related to physical and psychological health beyond the standard and less participatory channels such as publications on social networks or the dissemination of posters or leaflets. Workshops and/or support groups where affected people can participate directly, together with awareness-raising and training events for professionals and organizations that share the ambitions of the commitment, are ways of providing higher quality information with a greater capacity for outreach and feedback from citizens themselves. However, it should be noted that some of the workshops carried out are only pilot experiences with a limited social scope and, therefore, they require scaling up in the future in order to have a real capacity to permeate the public.
In addition to the complementary use of the media for the suicide awareness campaign for the general population, a suicide prevention website, and a bereavement prevention website have been developed. Both have guides, contact details for support, videos, etc.

Provide evidence for your answer:

• Monitoring Report on the Third Open Government Plan of the Madrid City Council (December 2022)
• Final Follow-Up Report On The Third Open Government Plan Of The Madrid City Council

2.1.2. – Did the government create new opportunities to seek feedback from citizens/enable participation inform or influence decisions; improve existing channels or spaces to seek feedback from citizens/enable participation/ inform or influence decisions; create or improve capabilities in the government or the public aimed to improve how the government seeks feedback from citizens/enables participation/ or allows for the public to inform or influence decisions?

Yes

Degree of result:

Major

Explanation: In narrative form, what has been the impact on people or practice.

The different actions developed in the commitment combined the collaboration with representing civil society agents (professional organizations, NGOs, companies, and other public entities), workshops, and training where participants could contribute their vision and the creation and development of group spaces for grief support. All of these are opportunities for the administration to gather feedback from the participating actors and for them in turn to influence the course of the implementation of the commitment. In fact, they are actions that open up the possibilities for local government to create community networks to take from and channel information and citizen participation.
The mapping of health assets within the framework of suicide prevention actions deserves special mention for its originality. These were carried out through the participation of the community in workshops in which citizens pointed out spaces that are a source of well-being in their daily environment. This makes it also possible to identify the city’s health assets in order to subsequently connect them and weave more cohesive community networks that are open to citizen participation for the improvement of community health.
An evaluation was also carried out through questionnaires to the participants of the prevention of bullying and cyberbullying pilot workshop. This allowed a more concrete definition of the actions to be implemented in the 2023-2024 workshops and the development of guidelines for their subsequent implementation.

Provide evidence for your answer:

• Monitoring Report on the Third Open Government Plan of the Madrid City Council (December 2022)
• Final Follow-Up Report On The Third Open Government Plan Of The Madrid City Council

2.1.3 Did the government create or improve channels, opportunities, or capabilities to hold officials answerable to their actions?

Not Applicable

2.1.4 Other Results

Not Applicable

2.2 Did the commitment address the public policy problem that it intended to address as described in the action plan?

Yes

Provide a brief explanation of your answer:

The three commitment activities address the different objectives and concrete actions around the issues of loss and bereavement, suicide, and childhood obesity. In addition, the various actions derived from these activities have ranged from the strategic concretization around public policy issues to the implementation of dissemination and awareness-raising actions, the formation of alliances with various stakeholders, etc. Likewise, the implementation of the commitment has generated the basis for new actions already planned in the short term and for the evaluation and revision of the respective strategies so far defined, thus glimpsing the possibility of more generalized impacts in the long term.

Provide evidence for your answer:

• Final Follow-Up Report On The Third Open Government Plan Of The Madrid City Council

3. Provide at least one lesson or reflection relating to the implementation of this commitment. It can be the identification of key barriers to implementation, an unexpected help/hindrance, recommendations for future commitments, or if the commitment should be taken forward to the next action plan.

Public policies that attempt to approach the issues addressed by engagement tend to be limited to actions to raise public awareness and direct action on the target population. These forms of passive involvement of the population are not enough to boost citizen participation, even if they amplify the information received by civil society. The engagement addressed here, on the other hand, has succeeded in using these forms of public intervention in favor of a process of greater citizen participation in the improvement of community health. This is based, above all, on the generation of collaborative networks between social stakeholders with common interests that have the potential both to optimize municipal resources and to socialise the prevention and treatment of common health problems in the city.
In any case, the actions undertaken, given the structural complexity of the issues they address, must still have a greater temporal and material scope in order to obtain truly effective results on the problems in question. Thus, although the implementation of the commitment is incipiently meeting the criteria and objectives of the OGP, its social impact is still imponderable.