Journal of urban health : bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Tackling the urban health divide though enabling intersectoral action on malnutrition in Chile and Kenya.
As momentum grows for a sustainable urbanisation goal in the post-2015 development agenda, this paper reports on an action research study that sought to tackle the urban health divide by enabling intersectoral action on social determinants at the local level. The study was located in the cities of Mombasa in Kenya and Valparaíso in Chile, and the impact of the intervention on child nutrition was evaluated using a controlled design. ⋯ Four factors were found to have been crucial for creating the enabling environment for effective intersectoral action (i) supportive government policy (ii) broad participation and capacity building (iii) involving policy makers as advisors and establishing the credibility of the research and (iii) strengthening community action. If lessons learned from this study can be adapted and applied in other contexts then they could have a significant economic and societal impact on health and nutrition equity in informal urban settlements.