Wang Wenjing, Liu Songjiang, Guo Bingnan
School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Jiangsu University of Science and Technology, Zhenjiang, China.
School of Economics and Management, Gannan University of Science and Technology, Ganzhou, China.
Front Public Health. 2025 May 1;13:1594104. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1594104. eCollection 2025.
Establishing a national health city is an important national policy aimed at optimizing urban environment and improving residents' health. A rigorous evaluation of the policy's impact on China's public health is imperative. Such an evaluation would provide a scientific foundation for the continuous improvement of the policy and enhance the overall health of the population.
Based on the panel data of 84 prefecture-level cities in China from 2011 to 2023, this study takes healthy cities as a quasi-natural experiment, and employs a DID model to deeply explore the impact of the National Health City Campaign (NHCC) on public health in China.
The research indicates that the policy has led to a decline in mortality rates and has contributed to the enhancement of public health in China to a certain extent. The impact of the NHCC varies across different regions, economic development levels, and population sizes. In addition, this study determined that the NHCC is capable of achieving substantial enhancements in public health levels by promoting the optimization and upgrading of industrial structure. The impact of the sewage treatment rate on public health levels is found to be regulatory in nature.
This study is instrumental in enhancing public health policy, providing a theoretical foundation for the development of a healthy city, and plays a pivotal role in the promotion of the Healthy China Initiative.
创建国家卫生城市是一项旨在优化城市环境和改善居民健康状况的重要国家政策。对该政策对中国公共卫生的影响进行严格评估势在必行。这样的评估将为政策的持续改进提供科学依据，并提高人口的整体健康水平。
基于2011年至2023年中国84个地级市的面板数据，本研究将健康城市作为一项准自然实验，并采用双重差分模型深入探究国家卫生城市创建活动（NHCC）对中国公共卫生的影响。
研究表明，该政策导致了死亡率的下降，并在一定程度上促进了中国公共卫生的改善。国家卫生城市创建活动的影响在不同地区、经济发展水平和人口规模之间存在差异。此外，本研究确定，国家卫生城市创建活动能够通过推动产业结构的优化升级，实现公共卫生水平的大幅提升。污水处理率对公共卫生水平的影响具有调节性质。
本研究有助于完善公共卫生政策，为健康城市的发展提供理论基础，并在推进健康中国行动中发挥关键作用。
