Abstract
This article describes the origins and characteristics of an interdisciplinary multinational collaboration aimed at promoting and disseminating actionable evidence on the drivers of health in cities in Latin America and the Caribbean: The Network for Urban Health in Latin America and the Caribbean and the Wellcome Trust funded SALURBAL (Salud Urbana en América Latina, or Urban Health in Latin America) Project. Both initiatives have the goals of supporting urban policies that promote health and health equity in cities of the region while at the same time generating generalizable knowledge for urban areas across the globe. The processes, challenges, as well as the lessons learned to date in launching and implementing these collaborations, are described. By leveraging the unique features of the Latin American region (one of the most urbanized areas of the world with some of the most innovative urban policies), the aim is to produce generalizable knowledge about the links between urbanization, health, and environments and to identify effective ways to organize, design, and govern cities to improve health, reduce health inequalities, and maximize environmental sustainability in cities all over the world.
Highlights
For the first time, more than half the world’s population lives in urban areas; by 2050 this figure is expected to approach 70%.[1]
Building on growing interest in urban health in the Latin American region, representatives of academic institutions and international organizations came together convened by the Dornsife School of Public Health in September of 2015
Researchers from all participating countries together with Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC)-Urban Health members present at the first in-person SALURBAL meeting heard presentations on what data might be available during the first year of the project and worked in small groups to brainstorm how they could capitalize on that data to answer more specific research questions during the first two years of the project
Summary
More than half the world’s population lives in urban areas; by 2050 this figure is expected to approach 70%.[1]. This article describes the origins and characteristics of an interdisciplinary multinational collaboration aimed at generating and disseminating actionable evidence on the drivers of health in cities in Latin America with the goals of supporting healthy urban policies in the region while at the same time producing generalizable knowledge for urban areas across the globe. The collaboration emerged both to address critical data, research, and policy gaps related to urban health in the region, and to take advantage of the Latin American context to generate knowledge relevant to other regions, especially those in the global south. We view the creation of both the vision and the structures as fundamental to the longterm sustainability of the partnership and to capacity building in the region generally
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
