The partnership’s overall goal is to increase the capacity of the Hungarian Association of Healthy Cities (HAHC) to provide guidance on women’s reproductive health services to its 23 member cities and to improve the networking capabilities among the member cities in addressing women’s reproductive health and other issues.  Specific objectives are to:

• Build capacity for improving women’s health and effective networking across HAHC initiatives throughout the duration of the partnership by sharing evaluation criteria, best practices and models.
• Improve methods for information sharing across sectors influencing health initiatives focused on women’s health by 2004 through tracking number of additional partners engaged in women’s health projects (i.e., business).
• Identify and prioritize women’s health needs from the 23 member cities based on needs assessment by April 2003.
• Build networking capacity by providing education and training, tools and techniques to promote a multi-sectoral approach (based on survey results to improve women’s health) by September 2004.  The types of training and tools to be provided will be based on the results of the needs assessment and will be tailored to meet the specific needs of the 23 member cities.
• Identify best practices and replicate models of effective networking across the twenty-three HAHC healthy cities initiatives by September 2004.

Needs Assessment

• The partners collaboratively developed a survey to collect information about current and proposed activities designed to improve women’s health.  The survey was distributed to the 23 HAHC member cities and responses are being collected.

• The US partners began developing a survey of business leaders to gauge their involvement in women’s health issues in Hungary.

• During the first partnership exchange to the US, the HAHC secretary general met with representatives of Pinnacle Health System’s Women’s Health Services and Women’s Health Resources, the Bureau of Health Planning, Hershey Medical Center’s Women’s Health Center, and Lancaster General Hospital’s Women and Babies Hospital.  The purpose of these visits was to learn about women’s health programs and services as examples of best practices to be applied to HAHC initiatives in Hungary and to evaluate facility design.

• A Memorandum of Understanding signing ceremony was held at the Martin Luther King, Jr. City Government Center in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on March 17, 2003.  The event was attended by the USAID assistant administrator for Europe and Eurasia, the mayor of Harrisburg, the senior policy advisor for Governor Rendell, a representative from the Embassy of the Republic of Hungary, a state legislator from Allegheny County and AIHA/DC staff.   A media advisory was issued by the Institute for Healthy Communities, in conjunction with the Mayor’s office; the General Assembly of Pennsylvania issued a House Resolution designating March 15 as “American Hungarian Day” in Pennsylvania; and a story about the signing appeared on the USAID Web site.

• A Memorandum of Understanding was signed by the partners March 17, 2003 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
• As of May 2003, the partnership had a total of 2 exchanges involving 1 person trip to Harrisburg and 2 person trips to Pécs.