The city of Aubervilliers has particularly high levels of unemployment, school dropouts, welfare recipients, and a relatively high number of cases of lead poisoning due to the fact that a considerable proportion of private housing is unsanitary. The municipal health and hygiene department’s objective in mounting the ASV project was to allow health practitioners to implement methods that they had already considered in the past but had never had the specific resources nor the opportunity to do so.

The city of Aubervilliers has put the issue of public health at the top of its list of priorities. Hence the municipal health and hygiene department’s participation in establishing a health and city workshop project. The project consisted in developing tools for diagnosis, training and evaluation, and encouraging the integration of the city’s residents by focusing on health-related issues. Another of the project’s goals was to reduce the impact of psychological disorders on integration and training processes. Several actions were undertaken in 2003 and 2004 in each of these areas.

The primary approach to this project was methodological: coordination of actors, motivation, evaluation, training, self-training support. The goal was to position health-related issues as a factor of integration and participation for residents of disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Neighbourhoods under municipal contract benefited first and foremost from this approach.

The implementation of the project gave public health officials visibility on the municipal health and city workshop and allowed them to combine their experience and develop a community approach to health-related issues. The ASV also helped improve the system of urban observation and reflection for the purpose of developing the SCOT (French programme for cohesion in urban development).

Beneficiaries included residents of decrepit neighbourhoods, and teenagers and adults with psychological disorders.

Two doctors (including one psychiatrist) and one public health assistant were recruited for a three-year period to put the ASV into action. The project’s total estimated cost for 2003-2005 was €275,810. This includes costs for the medical staff (60% of the total cost), administrative personnel (29%) and equipment/supplies (11%).

The ASV project was submitted for ESF Objective 2 funding, in category 1 (coherence plans, support for local capacity initiative), measure 3 (studies and support for designing and managing integrated urban projects).

City of Aubervilliers
Dr. Luc Ginot (Doctor), tel. +33 1 48 39 52 78

15/06/2000

case

Urban Policy > Social inclusion & integration > Quality of life

Health