Ambient and household air pollution are a major cause of death and disease globally. This public health threat is being increased due to the rapid urbanization process and environmental degradation that characterizes the 21st century and that have a higher impact in developing countries. The World Health Organization (WHO) Urban Health Initiative (UHI) is implemented as a response to the World Health Assembly (WHA) Resolution 68.8 from May 2015, which requests WHO to build health sector capacity to work with other sectors, support countries to identify effective policy measures, track progress, and continue to update the evidence for health impacts of air pollution. WHO conducted a pilot project in the city of Accra (Ghana) to address air pollution and related health effects in cities in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs). The Initiative provides a health-based implementation framework to reduce deaths and diseases associated with air pollutants, and realize climate and other health benefits (e.g., less injuries and safe physical activity). Particular attention has been given to assessing the impacts of policies in sectors responsible for air pollution, specifically household energy, land-use, waste and transport activities. This report includes discussions on the main results and impacts of the pilot project conducted in Accra. And it provides guidance and available tools that can be adapted to similar initiatives around the world to assess the health impacts of air pollution, promote policies to reduce air pollution and plan healthier environments.

This is the 2024 update of the Compendium of WHO and other UN guidance on health and environment. The Compendium is a comprehensive collection of available WHO and other UN guidance for improving health by creating healthier environments. It provides an overview and easy access of more than 500 actions, and a framework for thinking about health and environment interventions. It covers a broad range of areas such as air pollution, water, sanitation and hygiene, climate change, chemicals, radiation, or food systems. Guidance is classified according to principal sectors involved, level of implementation (national, community, health care), the type of instrument (taxes, infrastructure etc.) and the category of evidence. The Compendium compiles existing guidance from hundreds of documents in a simple and systematized format. To ensure the most up-to-date information is provided to the end users, the Compendium is updated on a regular basis and incorporates the latest major WHO or other UN guidance on health and environment. The target audience includes any decision-makers with relevance to health and environment, and those assisting them (such as mayors, staff in ministries, UN country staff etc.). The Compendium has been prepared by WHO in cooperation with UN Environment, UNDP and UNICEF.

This open access book explores ways to leverage information technology and machine learning to combat disease and promote health, especially in resource-constrained settings. It focuses on digital disease surveillance through the application of machine learning to non-traditional data sources. Developing countries are uniquely prone to large-scale emerging infectious disease outbreaks due to disruption of ecosystems, civil unrest, and poor healthcare infrastructure – and without comprehensive surveillance, delays in outbreak identification, resource deployment, and case management can be catastrophic. In combination with context-informed analytics, students will learn how non-traditional digital disease data sources – including news media, social media, Google Trends, and Google Street View – can fill critical knowledge gaps and help inform on-the-ground decision-making when formal surveillance systems are insufficient.

The urban built environment is a prime setting for microbial transmission, because just as cities serve as hubs for migration and international travel, components of the urban built environment serve as hubs that drive the transmission of infectious disease pathogens. The risk of infectious diseases for many people living in slums is further compounded by their poverty and their surrounding physical and social environment, which is often overcrowded, is prone to physical hazards, and lacks adequate or secure housing and basic infrastructure, including water, sanitation, or hygiene services. To examine the role of the urban built environment in the emergence and reemergence of infectious diseases that affect human health, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine planned a public workshop. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.

This open access book is the first to systematically introduce the principles of urban informatics and its application to every aspect of the city that involves its functioning, control, management, and future planning. It introduces new models and tools being developed to understand and implement these technologies that enable cities to function more efficiently – to become ‘smart’ and ‘sustainable’. The smart city has quickly emerged as computers have become ever smaller to the point where they can be embedded into the very fabric of the city, as well as being central to new ways in which the population can communicate and act. When cities are wired in this way, they have the potential to become sentient and responsive, generating massive streams of ‘big’ data in real time as well as providing immense opportunities for extracting new forms of urban data through crowdsourcing. This book offers a comprehensive review of the methods that form the core of urban informatics from various kinds of urban remote sensing to new approaches to machine learning and statistical modelling. It provides a detailed technical introduction to the wide array of tools information scientists need to develop the key urban analytics that are fundamental to learning about the smart city, and it outlines ways in which these tools can be used to inform design and policy so that cities can become more efficient with a greater concern for environment and equity.

Governance and financing are fundamental challenges to achieving urban health. This policy brief, aimed at urban health decision-makers, supports action on how to structure governance on urban health, across levels of government and among a broad range of stakeholders and strengthen financing for action. The brief is part of a series of four policy briefs that collectively support the implementation of strategic approach to urban health.

The anthrax incidents following the 9/11 terrorist attacks put the spotlight on the nation's public health agencies, placing it under an unprecedented scrutiny that added new dimensions to the complex issues considered in this report. The Future of the Public's Health in the 21st Century reaffirms the vision of Healthy People 2010, and outlines a systems approach to assuring the nation's health in practice, research, and policy. This approach focuses on joining the unique resources and perspectives of diverse sectors and entities and challenges these groups to work in a concerted, strategic way to promote and protect the public's health. Focusing on diverse partnerships as the framework for public health, the book discusses: The need for a shift from an individual to a population-based approach in practice, research, policy, and community engagement. The status of the governmental public health infrastructure and what needs to be improved, including its interface with the health care delivery system. The roles nongovernment actors, such as academia, business, local communities and the media can play in creating a healthy nation. Providing an accessible analysis, this book will be important to public health policy-makers and practitioners, business and community leaders, health advocates, educators and journalists.

Strategic Urban Health Communication Charles C. Okigbo, editor People are bombarded with messages continuously and sorting through them constantly. In this milieu, critical ideas about health promotion and illness prevention are forced to compete with distracting, conflicting, even contradictory information. To get vital messages through, communication must be effective, targeted, artful—in a word, strategic. Strategic Urban Health Communication provides a road map for understanding strategy, enhancing strategic planning skills, and implementing strategic communication campaigns. Deftly written chapters link the art and science of strategic planning to world health goals such as reducing health inequities and eradicating diseases. Flexibility is at the heart of these cases, which span developed and developing countries, uses of traditional and digital media, and chronic and acute health challenges. And the contributors ground their dispatches in the larger context of health promotion, giving readers useful examples of thinking globally while working locally. Included in the coverage: Urbanization, population, and health myths: addressing common misconceptions. Integrating HIV/family planning programs: opportunities for strategic communication. The role of sports in strategic health promotion in low-income areas. The Internet as a sex education tool: a case study from Thailand. Advertising and childhood obesity in China. Health communication strategies for sustainable development in a globalized world. Balancing depth of understanding of audiences and methods of reaching them, Strategic Urban Health Communication is a forward-looking resource geared toward professionals and researchers in urban health, global health, and health communication.