Urban Health: Global Perspectives

This offers a comprehensive discussion of key health trends and cross-cutting policy challenges. The volume’s 30 chapters are written by experts, policy makers and practitioners who consider both emerging and long-standing urban health problems. Thus, alongside infectious diseases and urban air quality (Chapters 8 and 21), the authors examine immigrant health (Chapters 4–5), climate change (Chapter 6), disasters (Chapter 12) and urban terrorism (Chapter 13). Among the wide-ranging case studies are discussions from Nairobi, Shanghai and Belo Horizonte, as well as Amsterdam, New York and London. Taken together, the chapters foster a holistic understanding of health and may inspire the intersectoral strategies needed to promote well-being.
Chapter 1 presents a global overview of urban health issues, while Chapter 2 introduces globalization and its health implications. Chapter 3 discusses demographic shifts and urbanization trends, and the author also advocates collecting spatially disaggregated health data and distinguishing slum-dwellers from other low-income households. Subsequent background chapters on global issues are complemented by detailed local discussions. For instance, Chapter 11 on crime and violence is rounded out by an analysis of urban terrorism (Chapter 13) and a case study of Zagreb’s activities to prevent youth violence (Chapter 14). An analysis of emerging chronic diseases such as heart disease or diabetes, which increasingly afflict the urban poor (Chapter 9), is followed by an extremely useful discussion of chronic disease care in Nairobi’s informal settlements (Chapter 10). The volume also encourages comparative analysis: interesting contrasts emerge by examining the Healthy Cities programme in European municipalities and in Shanghai (Chapters 26 and 27, respectively). Urban transport’s health impacts and growth trends are featured in Chapter 19, largely focusing on American motorization but incorporating comparisons from Curitiba, Delhi and Medellín.

The volume is particularly strong in its discussion of improving urban health governance (see Chapter 23 for an overview), with case studies of London and Belo Horizonte (Chapters 17 and 28, respectively). Latin American health governance is examined in Chapter 15, on Mexico’s health systems reforms, and in Chapter 16, on electronic health systems (with an interesting case study of São Paulo). Chapter 24 gives an interesting analysis of the local health implications of global business, including an examination of Mexico’s health trends after NAFTA. The author argues for “…a new kind of public health campaign” that would restrict the marketing of unhealthy products, eliminate subsidies for dangerous goods and require companies to pay the full costs of harm inflicted upon consumers (page 385).

The strategies needed in informal settlements are discussed in Chapter 20; water and sanitation services are examined in Chapter 18; and Chapter 25 explores how low-income groups have recently engaged in co-production and engagement with local government in reducing poverty, improving housing and addressing other social determinants of health. Urban Health: Global Perspectives thus captures key health challenges facing municipalities, places them in a broader perspective and invites greater collaboration in forging effective responses.