Healthy Polis – Developing Urban Lifecourse Approaches in response to Climate Change

There are two paradigms within the climate change and urban health research agendas which form the focus of this project – Future Cities and Healthy Cities.  Future Cities tends to be populated by architects and planners using a set of qualitative approaches whereas Healthy Cities seeks to promote healthy lifestyles for an urban population increasingly under pressure from measures to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

This project draws these research agendas together with the International Consortium for Urban Environmental Health and Sustainability’s Healthy-Polis initiative and extends this initiative to the WUN network.  Within this framework, we are bringing together researchers, practitioners and stakeholders from the key sectors (environmental science, public health, urban planning, geography and local government).

The partners identified have the capacity to make a significant contribution to our current understanding of the combined impact of climate change and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in urban areas, and the design of effective adaptation interventions.

This will be achieved by organising 2 international interdisciplinary workshops (one virtual, one face-to-face) focusing on:

1. challenges posed by climate change and NCDs in cities,
2. international approaches to healthy urban planning and sustainability
3. integrated assessment of urban planning interventions.

These workshops will involve WUN academic researchers (including young researchers and PhD students), public health practitioners, and urban planners. The workshops will also be used to identify collaborative research interests and explore areas of research at the cutting edge of this interdisciplinary field. Review articles will be produced documenting current research and these will be used to inform future collaborations, conference presentations and funding applications to ensure that momentum gained is sustained through the new networks which emerge.

Healthy-Polis: Developing Urban Life Course Approaches in Response to Climate Change workshop took place on 31 August 2016