Recently, the Tsinghua City Health Index, jointly researched and compiled by the China Institute of New Urbanization and the Vanke School of Public Health and Health of Tsinghua University, was officially released. In the context of the global spread of COVID-19, this study built a set of scientific and objective urban health measurement scales based on "Big health + big data", and for the first time realized the panoramic assessment of the comprehensive health level of 80 major cities in China. Huami Technology, as one of the partners, provided big data support for the study on lifestyle habits such as exercise, sleep and obesity.
Dr. Li Dong, senior research specialist at the China Institute of New Urbanization, Tsinghua University, introduced the overall framework of the study at the press conference: "Tsinghua City Health Index" focuses on the key elements of urban health in the index system, including health service, health behavior, health facilities, health environment and health effectiveness.
Among them, health behavior reflects the health status and attitude of individual residents, which is one of the important innovative highlights in this study. It is understood that through the overall analysis of the living habits data of urban citizens, the study understands the health characteristics of the overall living habits of local citizens, and evaluates from the two aspects of life behavior itself and behavior results. For example, based on the proportion of exercise population index can reflect the overall exercise level of urban residents; The sleep condition of residents can be reflected based on the proportion of sleep-deprived population. The proportion of obese adults is closely related to exercise and diet.
The study found a link between citizens' healthy habits and economic development. With the improvement of the overall economic level of the city, citizens' income and health awareness are also continuously improved. Citizens in central cities pay more attention to health issues and are more in line with the relevant requirements of health in terms of behavior.
The report also points out that the overall level of healthy behavior in cities is not high, with only 19 percent of cities ranked excellent or good. Among them, only five central cities, namely Hangzhou, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Chongqing, reached the excellent level, and no general prefecture-level city was shortlisted.
The study also focused on the proportion of people who exercise for more than half an hour three times a week in each city, and found that Guiyang, Hangzhou, Dalian and Qingdao had relatively high proportions of people who exercise, according to the WHO's Guidelines on Physical Activity and Sedentary Behavior.
Dr. Dong Li told the media at the press conference that data sharing with partners is also one of the characteristics of this study. For example, through cooperation with Huami Technology, the institute has introduced big data of smart wearable devices. Under the premise of properly protecting users' privacy, it has collected statistics on the exercise, sleep and other conditions of users in various cities.
As the world's leading smart wearable and health cloud service company, Huami Technology, with its AI algorithm and big data analysis capabilities, strongly supported the research work. The relevant research targeted people who wore smart wearable devices for more than 60 days in 2019, with more than 10,000 people sampled in each city.
"In the future, we will continue to vigorously carry out research on urban health index, and gradually extend it to rural areas, and finally realize the whole-region, whole-population and whole-cycle coverage of health assessment and monitoring," said Wang Yu, distinguished professor of the Healthy City Research Center at the China Institute of New Urbanization at Tsinghua University and former director of the National Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The long-term plan of the "Tsinghua Urban Health Index" includes continuous optimization and improvement of the index system, continuous output of results, further expansion of the cooperation circle, and strengthening of policy recommendations.
