The Future of Urban Health Security Research

With the growth of global urbanization, interconnected infrastructure networks, and climate change creating new drivers of change, the topic of health security in urban settings is rapidly evolving. Cities’ distinct conditions impact the way pandemics, epidemics, and other public health crises emerge as new risks, intensifying or reducing their impact in complex ways. While there is a long history of researching infectious disease and public health in cities, globally networked cities present unprecedented phenomena; this paper explores how more consideration is needed around emerging relationships between cities and health security. 

 

Entitled “A research agenda for urban health security,” urbanism and health scholars have come together to address this need, laying out a guide for the themes that should be given attention. Among the authors are two Georgetown faculty: Rebecca Katz, Professor and Director of the Center for Global Health Science and Security with joint appointments in Georgetown University Medical Center and the School of Foreign Service, and Uwe Brandes, professor of the practice, faculty director of the Urban & Regional Planning Program, and faculty director of the Georgetown Global Cities Initiative.

 

In collaboration with other scholars from across the globe, the paper identifies 10 critical themes to be pursued in urban health security research:

- Community partnerships, place management organizations, and grassroots engagement;

- Capacity assessments, simulation exercises, and after-action reviews;

- Governance and financing structures;

- Health threat surveillance systems;

- Policymaker perceptions;

- Private sector engagement;

- Resilient urban infrastructure;

- Risk communication;

- Data-enabled urban systems and technology solutions;

- National and international urban networks and organizations.

 

Knowledge development in these thematic areas can guide cities in more effective and inclusive planning, management, response, and recovery around public health emergencies, ushering them toward a better, resilient, equitable, and sustainable future.