Eugenia Birch, PhD

Conversations on Urban Health - Dr Yonette Thomas

Professor Birch is trained as a city planner focused on building cities of lasting value. She points out that health is a very important aspect of that value. A community of lasting value is a community in which its inhabitants lead healthy productive lives. Mental health and physical health are equally important for lasting healthy cities. The field of city planning has its origins in public health. The focus on sanitation, water, and housing are among the key issues in neighborhood and city planning. Professor Birch sees ISUH as having three functions: (1) Convener – bringing together people across disciplines. The population of the people attending the ISUH conferences crosses disciplinary boundaries and dialogue is based on good scientific research and different points of view; (2) A voice for all of the principles that we work out and promote together for good health and good healthy places; and (3) A lab – supporting projects that bring together people to solve problems affecting people in urban environments. SDG alignment is a definite area around which ISUH can create transdisciplinary dialogue and action by bringing groups together. ISUH can serve a bridge function for engagement at the national level with the agencies that are working on the SDGs and at the local level where projects are modeling and piloting solutions for challenges such as gender health and food and cities. Engaging ISUH membership in such efforts can be done by identifying spaces within the conferences to create conversations and opportunities for dialog on synthesis across the SDGs, for example. There could be a special issue of the Journal of Urban Health that really dives into how to integrate and synthesize the SDGs – creating opportunities for problem solving and solutions generation. Professor Birch urges ISUH to collaborate and partner with the General Assembly of Partners and other large organizations to create matching opportunities for members.