ICUH 2024: A Healthier Horizon: Activating Urban Health Strategies for a Climate

The Africa Urban Health Community of Practice (CoP), a partnership between UrbanBetter Academy and the International Society for Urban Health (ISUH), brings together scholarly, government, non-governmental, private sector and community-based actors in/of the African continent to promote action-oriented knowledge generation anchored in policy and practice to advance urban health and promote health equity in the region. 

Our overall goal is to contribute to building a critical mass of urban health researchers and practitioners in Africa, with the aim to promote an “Africa-first” approach to urban health issues.

The goal of this networking lunch session is to introduce delegates to the community, share past activities and plans for the next year and to grow the community encouraging urban health professionals in/of Africa to join the community of practice and actively participate in activities in the year ahead.

This interactive workshop focuses on assessing the relationship between the way our urban environments are designed and community food systems. Alongside various communities, Gehl and Cities for Better Health have co-created an approach and suite of tools, designed to assess the quality of the built environment and its influence on food behaviours. The tools allow users to record observations on the relationship between urban design and food habits, offering insights into how public space design and maintenance impact public health and climate readiness of our urban food systems.

The two-part workshop will begin with attendees participating in a field exercise in Marrakesh. Learning from a city of souks, participants will have a chance to explore and map the local food environment, investigating how elements of the built environment either support or hinder activities and behaviours of a healthy food system and a climate-resilient environment. This hands-on activity aims to illustrate the tools’ utility in real-world settings and set the frame for a feedback and sharing session between the workshop participants and the practitioners at Gehl and Cities for Better Health, who are always evolving and adapting the tool to better service projects that leverage the built environment as a vehicle for community and planetary health.

The second part of the workshop, will convene on the following day and introduce some of the urban conditions that underpin the food system's ability to support community and planetary health such as environmental conditions (WaSH) necessary for healthy routines, co-location of food places and transportation hubs, and how the public realm can support local economic growth — an essential component of furthering health equity in cities. Supported by case studies, we will demonstrate how the tools have been used in various contexts to tailor preventative health interventions to a community’s unique opportunities, challenges, and climates. 

There will also be space for reflecting on the participants hands-on experience of using the tools in the field from the previous day - and how they may be applied in their work.

Participants will be sent material ahead of arriving in Marrakesh, with introductory materials to the approach and tools, including a short reflection exercise to conduct in their own local context.