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, Cavanaugh A, Suel E, Bixby H, Clark SN, Metzler AB, Nimo J, Bedford-Moses J, Baah S, Arku RE, Robinson BE, Baumgartner J, Bennett JE, Arif AM, Long Y, Agyei-Mensah S, Ezzati M

Measurement of urban vitality with time-lapsed street-view images and object-detection for scalable assessment of pedestrian-sidewalk dynamics

ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, 221 , pp. 251-264, 2025.

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Li Y, Zhang Y, Long Y, Bhalla K, Ezzati M

Assessing bicycle safety risks using emerging mobile sensing data

Travel Behaviour and Society, 38 , pp. 100906, 2025.

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Wang J, Alli AS, Clark SN, Ezzati M, Brauer M, Hughes AF, Nimo J, Bedford-Moses J, Baah S, Nathvani R

Inequalities in urban air pollution in sub-Saharan Africa: An empirical modelling of ambient NO and NO2 concentrations in Accra, Ghana

Environmental Research Letters, 19 (3), pp. 034036, 2024.

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Yadav N, Sorek-Hamer M, Von Pohle M, Asanjan AA, Sahasrabhojanee A, Suel E, Arku R, Lingenfelter V, Brauer M, Ezzati M, Oza N, Ganguly AR

Using deep transfer learning and satellite imagery to estimate urban air quality in data-poor regions

Environmental Pollution, 342 , pp. 122914, 2024.

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Wells CD, Kasoar M, Ezzati M, Voulgarakis A

Significant human health co-benefits of mitigating African emissions

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 24 (2), pp. 1025–1039, 2024.

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62 entries « 1 of 13 »

Nutrition