Healthy Cities

Through Healthy Cities we aim to support people’s health in a changing climate, and help people make the link between their health and the environment.

Launched in 2015 in Spain and now a global initiative, the Healthy Cities programme encourages people to adopt sustainable and healthy lifestyles, while Bupa invests in regenerating urban environments for people to thrive.

Our goal is to support 1 million people by the end of 2025.

Challenge

The programme encourages people – our customers, people, partners, and communities - to do things that keep them and the planet healthy, like being active.

Regeneration

In return, we fund urban nature projects in partnership with local authorities and non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

Advocacy

Through the programme we will raise awareness and build partnerships to drive action for healthier, greener cities.

To keep people healthy in a changing climate, we must create environments that support their wellbeing.

Our nature regeneration efforts focus on deprived urban areas across cities where Bupa has a presence, and peri-urban areas where nature is declining. By focusing on urban areas we ensure our regeneration activities support human health, and bring benefits to local communities.

Examples of our activities include:

Asia Pacific

• Online and in person conservation volunteering with a focus on urban biodiversity initiative nature blocks, with partner Conservation Volunteers Australia
• Land regeneration in New Zealand with partner New Zealand Landcare Trust
• Bamboo Afforestation Project with A Plastic Ocean Foundation to support nature regeneration around waterways in Hong Kong

Europe and Latin America

• Established the Bupa Türkiye Memorial Forest in collaboration with Habitat Association in Gaziantep, Türkiye
• Urban wetland regeneration in Madrid, Spain
• Reforestation projects in six green spaces across Ecuador

Bupa Global, India and United Kingdom

• Planting trees in areas of deprivation and low canopy cover in Manchester with City of Trees
• Creating a Miyawaki forest in New Delhi, India, to support and enhance the local ecosystem in partnership with Green Yatra
• Planting fruit trees with partner Shagrha in and around Cairo, Egypt

Our Healthy Cities programme includes global advocacy and partnerships activity on climate, health and cities.

This is a critical way that we work with others to raise awareness of the link between our health and that of our environments, and to drive cross-sector collaboration to create healthier, greener cities that support the health of people and planet.

Norman Foster Foundation (NFF)

Bupa has a global, three-year collaboration agreement joining forces with the Norman Foster Foundation (NFF). The partnership will help create healthy and climate-resilient cities that benefit people and planet health.

As the health partner of the Norman Foster Institute of Sustainable Cities Master's Programme, we provide support to train future city leaders, architects, planners and engineers, helping them put health at the centre of sustainable city design.

Find out more about our partnership with the Norman Foster Foundation

Thought leadership and advocacy

We’ve collaborated with NFF and C40 Cities to outline the growing health risks due to climate change and what can be done mitigate these risks.

We recently published our second Healthy and Climate-Resilient Cities report (PDF, 12.4MB) with C40 Cities, and the Norman Foster Foundation, which details what city leaders of the future need so that they can put health at the heart of urban environments’ design.

This edition builds on the recommendations of the 2023 report which included the creation and resourcing of multisectoral city leadership groups and embedding a health-centred, climate-resilient approach to urban redesign.