Mapping data for urban health

Abstract

Urban health takes more than meeting the health needs of the population living in cities to address urban health challenges. It requires a multisectoral, multilevel and multi-actor approach. One of the major challenges city authorities face is the adequate use of data to inform their policy-making.

This project will contribute to the field of evidence-informed decision-making at city level by exploring how adequate data can be obtained, combined, interpreted and presented to decision-makers in order to inform decision-making about wicked urban health problems and in situations of shocks and uncertainty.

We aim at answering the questions:

• Which socio-political processes shape the decision-making processes on the production and use of data for evidence-informed urban health policymaking?

• To what level can different types of data be merged, linked or interpreted in a way that builds multidisciplinary evidence?

Through this study, we will develop flowcharts and test scenarios that can be used as a stress test to evaluate the relevance and usefulness of existing data(sets), and identify gaps in data. To achieve this, we will set up a co-creation with local partners in Antwerp and Lima, building upon existing relationships with the city administrations and other relevant actors.

Details

• Ongoing initiative

• Started in 2024 under the datahub.