福利姬自慰

Global Health Summit: improving health through innovative city design

As more and more of the world鈥檚 population migrates to cities to seek employment, health-care professionals are thinking about ways to ensure that those cities provide healthy environments for large numbers of people.

The , slated for November 3 to 5 at the University of Toronto鈥檚 , will bring together experts from diverse fields, including architecture, business, medicine, engineering and public health, to explore ways to design, build or change cities to provide residents with the most equitable opportunities for good health.

鈥淎 healthy city is one in that promotes health equity for all citizens,鈥 said Patricia O鈥機ampo, a professor at the Dalla Lana School and director of the at St. Michael鈥檚 Hospital.

鈥淎chieving health equity goes beyond equitable access to health care,鈥 continued O鈥機ampo, who co-leads the School鈥檚 with Professor Blake Poland. 鈥淲e also need healthy urban infrastructure, safe recreation, access to good jobs, and an end to violence, racism, isolation and community disenfranchisement.鈥

Anita McGahan, associate dean of research at the and a contributor to Innovating for the Global South (福利姬自慰Press), said, 鈥淲e still deliver health care at the county or city level, but inequality and human suffering are not city- or country-specific; they can have implications all over the world.鈥

McGahan believes that resilience, 鈥渢he ability to adapt to whatever circumstances you鈥檙e in and the cards you鈥檙e dealt, has more of an impact on health than almost any other factor.鈥

Poland, another proponent of resilience, noted that 鈥渨e tend to assume that 鈥榲ulnerable groups鈥 are most lacking in resilience, but it is also true that marginalized groups deal with stress, hardship and loss on a more regular basis,鈥 often in terms of inadequate funds for shelter or food, for example.

He said equity still gets short shrift in the resilience literature.

鈥淚nequity dwarfs diabetes or smoking as a determinant of health,鈥 he said. 鈥淲e tend to look at ameliorative programming, rather than asking what is producing and reproducing these inequities in the first place.鈥

Poland noted that it is also important to look at the emerging threats to health equity, such as the ecosystem and resource depletion.

鈥淭he ecological determinants of health are poised to succeed the social determinants in relative importance in the coming decades,鈥 he said. 鈥淲e need to pay more attention to environmental degradation and climate change. With more uncertainty, we will be hit with surprises 鈥 like hurricanes or flooding 鈥 and we need to think about our systems鈥 responses.鈥

Stephen Verderber, a professor at the who lived through Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, is looking at what cities can do to heal themselves when they absorb blows dealt by environmental events, such as earthquakes, hurricanes or floods.

鈥淎fter the Christmas ice storm in Toronto, it took longer than expected for the city to bounce back,鈥 he said. 鈥淲e need to consider how the built environment can provide prosthetic support, for instance with hospitals, clinics and other portable facilities brought into the disaster zone.鈥

McGahan said she hopes the discussion of these issues at the Global Health Summit and their implications will 鈥渁ffect how we teach about health and develop public policy.鈥

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