One in nine people on Earth today lives in a Chinese city. Six years ago, I had the opportunity to contribute to the Tsinghua University-Lancet Commission on Healthy Cities in China, which laid out principles for action on urban health in this important context. Now, an update (“Healthy cities initiative in China: Progress, challenges, and the way forward”) traces progress and pitfalls in the intervening period—a fascinating glimpse into China’s city governance and the practical challenges of integrated urban health action in a crowded institutional space.

The World Urban Forum is the UN’s preeminent meeting on cities, held every two years, and hosting tens of thousands of urban stakeholders from the public, private, civic, and academic sectors. Late this June, I joined the WHO Urban Health team for WUF11 in Katowice, Poland, where we presented a varied schedule of solutions-oriented events exploring links between urban design, planning, management, and health, and consulted with a wide range of stakeholders on how we can improve urban health approaches. Our booth was a hit, too!

On May 26th, I reunited with IIASA colleagues old and new to celebrate the Institute’s 50th Anniversary. Over half a century of systems analysis, IIASA has contributed to better understanding and policy across an array of issues of global change. At about 1:48 here, I offer some thoughts on the growing importance of systems thinking in urban health and sustainable development.

I was recently a member of the Steering Committee for a new series of Health and Climate Change Urban Profiles from WHO, now piloting in 6 cities. These information-packed products follow on from WHO’s Health and Climate Change Country profiles, tracking national progress in 80+ countries. and aim to raise awareness of the local impacts of climate change on health and build the case for action.

In this new article in Social Science and Medicine, we argue that better understanding context is central to generalizing the results of global health interventions. Transfer and scaling depend not only on faithful implementation but on replicating the geographical, environmental, social, cultural, political, and economic “shields” that frame an intervention, allowing it to express a cause-and-effect relationship with an outcome or outcomes. We examine these challenges in the context of the transformative RISE programme.

I’ve recently signed on for a new challenge, working with the WHO Urban Health team to develop a more coherent, transformative approach to urban health data, science, policy, and practice across the agency and with its partners. There’s already lots of exciting new work at WHO in this area: for example, check out the new WHO urban health repository. Watch this space…

The first edition of Making Healthy Places offered a thorough review of the linkages between the built and environment and health. A decade on, this update, due in July 2022, renews and expands on the classic text. I contributed two chapters: one, with Katy Indvik, on cities, climate change, and health; another, with Katy Indvik and Kim O’Sullivan, on resilience and healthy places.

The International Society for Urban Health (ISUH) is “the only global non-governmental organization to advance the generation, exchange, and application of interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral urban health knowledge and educational models and to support the development of evidenced based programs and policies to promote urban health.” I’ll be joining the ISUH Expert Advisory Council for 2022-24, hoping to contribute a systems perspective and build bridges across regions and with critical city stakeholders. The Society’s annual meeting, the International Conference on Urban Health (ICUH) is my favorite gathering each year, a great mix of academics, practitioners and policy makers. This October 24-27, it will be held in Valencia, Spain—save the date!