Urban Health: Reflections on Practice

Editors: Qurratulain Faheem, Dr Liza Griffin, Professor Haim Yacobi

Executive summary

Urban landscape being home to over 55% of the world’s population1 (WHO 2021) is at the forefront of tackling critical global development issues, particularly public health. The burden of rising noncommunicable diseases, the persistent threat of infectious disease outbreaks, an increased risk of violence and injuries are a few key public health concerns in urban areas to mention. While urbanization can bring health and economic benefits, rapid and unplanned urbanization poses numerous challenges to social and environmental health, which impacts vulnerable and poor segments of the population more hardly than others. Health inequities are visible in urban areas with work and educational opportunities centered in one part of the city while migrants and other disadvantaged groups clustered in the most deprived and environmentally degraded neighborhoods making access to health services even harder and health outcomes unattainable. 

These inequities are exacerbated post-disaster conditions such as earthquake of September 2023 in Marrakech. The earthquake severely impacted the urban health of more than 200,000 individuals by disrupting infrastructures such as housing, roads and irrigation system, causing injuries, and increasing the spread of various health problems. Currently, thousands of people are settled in make-shifts homes and tents. These arrangements not only expose them to numerous communicable diseases such as cholera and diarrhea but, also a source of social and psychological problems such as mental health problems and gender-based violence.

Against the backdrop of health inequalities and urban health crises, the Bartlett Development Planning Unit offers a post-graduate programme on Health in Urban Development (HUD). This year long intensive programme helps its students and faculties to critically engage with the discourse of urban health in the Global South. The programme advocates that the issues concerning urban health could not be fully understood and addressed without engaging with the social, political, cultural and economic factors tied to them. In order for students to better the social determinants of health, the programme offers a core module of 30 credits under the title of ‘Urban Health: Reflections on Practice’ to enable them to learn while practicing and, at the same time, put their learnings into practice through an overseas physical engagement (OPE).

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