Equity in public life: UCL researchers convene to explore future spaces of women's health

This news item is from the Bartlett School of Architecture.

As part of UCL’s bicentennial celebrations, the Bartlett School of Architecture co-hosted Future Spaces of Women’s Health: Equity in Public Life with UCL’s EGA Institute for Women’s Health (IfWH) and the Designing Equity Unit (DEU). The event marked the start of Dr Kristina Clackson Bonnington’s research residency at the Bartlett and brought together academic communities from the UCL Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, UCL’s Faculty of Population Health Sciences and UCL’s Institute of Education, alongside researchers and clinicians from UCLH and the charity Wellbeing of Women.

Attendees worked together to create cityscapes exploring how public spaces and institutions in the area surrounding 22 Gordon Street could be redesigned and re-imagined to address women’s health needs better.

Professor Sam Janes, Dean of UCL’s Faculty of Population Health Sciences, and Professor Anna David, Director of UCL’s EGA Institute for Women’s Health, spoke about the changing spaces of women’s health and developments towards delivering care within home settings.

Dr Clackson Bonnington discussed how the DEU is developing a portfolio of spatial proposals for public life that actively promote women’s health. The DEU’s work builds on the installation of House of Doors at UK Parliament and UCL Female Firsts, a cross-faculty project marking 100 years since Parliament first extended women’s right to vote, and links directly to the Women’s Health Strategy for England.

The DEU subsequently shared first findings at UCL Innovation & Enterprise’s conference ‘Re-centring Women’s Health in the Age of Big Tech’, held at the Royal College of Physicians, and is contributing to a spatial analysis of New Town sites exploring opportunities to promote women’s health in the planning of public spaces within the New Towns Programme.