Health Impacts of urban Transformation (HIT) Consortium
Lead Research Organisation:
Imperial College London
Department Name: UNLISTED
Abstract
Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.
Technical Summary
This grant is funded by the UK Prevention Research Partnership (UKPRP) which is administered by the Medical Research Council on behalf of the UKPRP’s 12 funding partners: British Heart Foundation; Cancer Research UK; Chief Scientist Office of the Scottish Government Health and Social Care Directorates; Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council; Economic and Social Research Council; Health and Social Care Research and Development Division, Welsh Government; Health and Social Care Public Health Agency, Northern Ireland; Medical Research Council; Natural Environment Research Council; National Institute for Health Research; The Health Foundation; The Wellcome Trust.
Cities are being transformed by an ensemble of powerful social, economic, behavioural and technological forces, presenting new challenges and opportunities to promote healthy living and disease prevention. The key challenge addressed by our consortium is to develop methods to understand, characterise and predict impacts of these multi-sectoral urban transformation processes, within a complex, highly dynamic and partially observed system. Our goal is the promotion of healthy living, improved health and reduction in health inequalities, by analysing well-understood pathways of influence and characterising new and emerging pathways. Our focus is on how changes in the urban environment affect, in children, i) lung function and lung growth (risk markers for chronic respiratory illness in later life) and ii) cognitive development; and iii) non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in adults, both city-wide and at small-area scale. Using London as an exemplar global city, we take a multi-disciplinary systems-wide modelling approach, combining leading data, modelling and application expertise in epidemiology, public health, behavioural, transport, physical activity, policy and urban systems modelling, with close involvement of diverse user community in planning, delivery, local authorities and public health. To ensure the project is practically grounded and produces policy relevant outputs, we combine fundamental work in modelling and analysis of health impact pathways in urban systems with two exemplar case studies. The first is the ultra-Low Emission Zone (uLEZ), a natural experiment implemented from April 2019, with expected major impact on levels of noise and air pollution. The second is the Old Oak Common/Park Royal Development, a major regeneration and transport hub project, offering the opportunity, with the user community, to have direct influence on its design and implementation to improve health. To complement and support the technical work of the project, we will put in place a programme of active user engagement in co-production, dissemination, translation and outreach.
Cities are being transformed by an ensemble of powerful social, economic, behavioural and technological forces, presenting new challenges and opportunities to promote healthy living and disease prevention. The key challenge addressed by our consortium is to develop methods to understand, characterise and predict impacts of these multi-sectoral urban transformation processes, within a complex, highly dynamic and partially observed system. Our goal is the promotion of healthy living, improved health and reduction in health inequalities, by analysing well-understood pathways of influence and characterising new and emerging pathways. Our focus is on how changes in the urban environment affect, in children, i) lung function and lung growth (risk markers for chronic respiratory illness in later life) and ii) cognitive development; and iii) non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in adults, both city-wide and at small-area scale. Using London as an exemplar global city, we take a multi-disciplinary systems-wide modelling approach, combining leading data, modelling and application expertise in epidemiology, public health, behavioural, transport, physical activity, policy and urban systems modelling, with close involvement of diverse user community in planning, delivery, local authorities and public health. To ensure the project is practically grounded and produces policy relevant outputs, we combine fundamental work in modelling and analysis of health impact pathways in urban systems with two exemplar case studies. The first is the ultra-Low Emission Zone (uLEZ), a natural experiment implemented from April 2019, with expected major impact on levels of noise and air pollution. The second is the Old Oak Common/Park Royal Development, a major regeneration and transport hub project, offering the opportunity, with the user community, to have direct influence on its design and implementation to improve health. To complement and support the technical work of the project, we will put in place a programme of active user engagement in co-production, dissemination, translation and outreach.
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |