Urban Health

Cities are home to a rising majority of the world’s population. The concentration of knowledge, innovation, economic activity, healthcare, education, and other public services gives cities the potential to improve the health and wellbeing of their residents and those of other parts of the country. We use interdisciplinary data and novel methods to measure and phenotype complex urban environments and to evaluate the health impacts of urban policies and urban change, with particular emphasis on inequalities in urban environment and health among different parts of a city and difference social groups. The work involves both intensive field monitoring campaigns for in-depth measurement of urban environment and health in specific cities, and the use of emerging big-data sources such as imagery, to measure and phenotype cities’ environment and track how they change.

As part of this work, we lead the Pathways to Equitable Healthy Cities Study in which academic and policy partners develop and model the impacts of policy scenarios related to housing and the built environment, transportation, water, sanitation and waste management, and urban services on health and health inequalities.

Related Publications

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Nathvani R, Vishwanath D, Clark SN, Alli AS, Muller E, Coste H, Bennett JE, Nimo J, Bedford-Moses J, Baah S, Hughes A, Suel E, Metzler AB, Rashid T, Brauer M, Baumgartner J, Owusu G, Agyei-Mensah S, Arku RE, Ezzati M

Beyond here and now: Evaluating pollution estimation across space and time from street view images with deep learning

Science of the Total Environment, 903 , pp. 166168, 2023.

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Metzler AB, Nathvani R, Sharmanska V, Bai W, Muller E, Moulds S, Agyei-Asabere C, Adjei-Boadi D, Kyere-Gyeabour E, Tetteh JD, Owuwu G, Agyei-Mensah S, Baumgartner J, Robinson BE, Arku RE, Ezzati M

Phenotyping urban built and natural environments with high-resolution satellite images and unsupervised deep learning

Science of the Total Environment, 893 , pp. 164794, 2023.

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Suel E, Muller E, Bennett JE, Blakely T, Doyle Y, Lynch J, Mackenbach JD, Middel A, Mizdrak A, Nathvani R, Brauer M, Ezzati M

Do poverty and wealth look the same the world over? A comparative study of 12 cities from five high-income countries using street images

EPJ Data Science, 12 (1), pp. 19, 2023.

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MacTavish R, Bixby H, Cavanaugh A, Agyei-Mensah S, Bawah AA, Owusu G, Ezzati M, Arku RE, Robinson BE, Schmidt AM, Baumgartner J

Identifying deprived “slum” neighbourhoods in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area of Ghana using census and remote sensing data

World Development, 167 , pp. 106253, 2023.

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NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC)

Diminishing benefits of urban living for children and adolescents’ growth and development

Nature, (615), pp. 874–883, 2023.

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60 entries « 2 of 12 »

Nutrition