Journal of urban health : bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine
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Anthropogenic environmental change will heavily impact cities, yet associated health risks will depend significantly on decisions made by urban leaders across a wide range of non-health sectors, including transport, energy, housing, basic urban services, and others. A subset of planetary health researchers focus on understanding the urban health impacts of global environmental change, and how these vary globally and within cities. Such researchers increasingly adopt collaborative transdisciplinary approaches to engage policy-makers, private citizens, and other actors in identifying and evaluating potential policy solutions that will reduce environmental impacts in ways that simultaneously promote health, equity, and/or local economies-in other words, maximising 'co-benefits'. ⋯ The workshop, held at the 16th International Conference on Urban Health (ICUH) in Xiamen, China, in November 2019, brought together 49 participants and covered topics related to collaboration, data, and research impact. It featured research projects funded by the Wellcome Trust's Our Planet Our Health (OPOH) programme. This report aims to concisely summarise and disseminate participants' collective contributions to current methodological practice in urban planetary health research.
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Experiencing outdoor space, especially natural space, during childhood and adolescence has beneficial physical and mental health effects, including improved cognitive and motor skills and a lower risk of obesity. Since school-age children typically spend 35-40 hours per week at schools, we quantified their access to open (non-built-up) space and green space at schools in Greater London. We linked land use information from the UK Ordnance Survey with school characteristics from the Department for Education (DfE) for schools in Greater London. ⋯ Fee-paying schools provided less open space compared to non-fee-paying schools in central parts of London, but the provision became comparable in suburban London. Many London schools do not provide enough open and green space. There is a need to ensure regular contact with green space through safeguarding school grounds from sales, financially supporting disadvantaged schools to increase their outdoor space and providing access to off-site facilities such as sharing outdoor space with other schools.
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This paper sets out a structured process for the co-production of knowledge between researchers and societal partners and illustrates its application in an urban health equity project in Accra, Ghana. The main insight of this approach is that research and knowledge co-production is always partial, both in the sense of being incomplete, as well as being circumscribed by the interests of participating researchers and societal partners. A second insight is that project-bound societal engagement takes place in a broader context of public and policy debate. ⋯ Building blocks are activities and interaction-based methods aimed at bringing together a range of participants involved in joint knowledge production. In practice, recursive iterations within loops may be limited due of constraints on time, resources, or attention. We suggest that co-production loops and building blocks are deployed flexibly.
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The UK has introduced legislation that requires net-zero greenhouse gas emissions to be achieved by 2050. Improving the energy efficiency of homes is a key objective to help reach this target, and the UK government's Clean Growth Strategy aims to get many homes up to an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) Band of C by 2035. The relationship between home energy-efficiency and occupant health and wellbeing remains an area of ongoing research. ⋯ This indicates that the least well-off may benefit most from home energy efficiency programs. A statistically significant positive association is also observed for the relationship between self-reported health and air infiltration rates (z score = 2.62, p value = 0.01). The findings support existing evidence for the predominantly naturally ventilated UK housing stock, suggesting that home energy efficiency measures provide a co-benefit for occupant health provided that adequate air exchange is maintained.
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The incidence of lung cancer is affected by air pollution, especially in high-density urban areas with heavy road traffic and dense urban form. Several studies have examined the direct relationship between lung cancer incidence and road traffic as well as urban form. However, the results are still inconsistent for high-density urban areas. ⋯ The results showed that building coverage, averaged block perimeter area ratio, density of metro station without the glass barrier system, and the percentage of low-quality residential land were positively correlated with lung cancer incidence in the neighborhood, while population density was negatively correlated with lung cancer incidence. This study found a strong self-selection effect of socio-economic factors in the relationship between lung cancer incidence and greenness. These results may be useful for conducting health impact assessments and developing spatial planning interventions for respiratory health in high-density urban areas.