The way cities are built have a significant impact on our health. From land-use mix to transportation infrastructure and housing, the physical features of communities influence the health-seeking behaviours of their residents, and contribute to opportunities to incorporate physical activity in their day-to-day lives. To better understand these connections, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research funded three projects to look at a variety of aspects of the urban form and urban development and how they impact public health. In this webinar, learn what researchers have discovered and where they plan to go next.
About the Projects
The Built Environment and Active Transportation Safety in Children and Youth
This research program studies how features of the built environment affect whether kids walk or bike to school and whether or not certain built environment features increase or decrease their likelihood of getting hurt. The program partners with injury prevention professionals, provincial governments, environmental organizations and traffic safety professionals who are in a position to help us better understand what features of traffic environments are dangerous or safe.
Multisectoral Urban Systems for Health and Equity in Canadian Cities
At the beginning of the 21st century, to counter threats to population health, Public Health Departments have forged new alliances with major Canadian cities. This research program studies partnerships aimed at transforming built environments to increase the availability of fruit and vegetables, promote public transport and physical activity, and improve availability of affordable housing.
Environments and Health INTERACT: INTErventions, Research, and Action in Cities Team
This research project measures how designing healthy cities can influence physical activity and how much people participate in social activities. It evaluates four infrastructure designs in four different Canadian cities (Vancouver, Victoria, Saskatoon and Montreal). It also develops and refines smartphone apps to measure how people move through cities. These tools include apps to measure physical activity and apps for interactive mapping of where people move in a city.
About the Speakers
The Built Environment and Active Transportation Safety in Children and Youth
Brent Hagel is a Professor in the Departments of Pediatrics and Community Health Sciences in the Cumming School of Medicine and Adjunct Professor in Kinesiology at the University of Calgary. He is Director of the Healthy Children, Families and Communities Program of the Alberta Children’s Hospital Research Institute and a member of the O’Brien Institute for Public Health. His key research interest area is child and adolescent injury prevention currently focused on the determinants of child and youth bicycle, pedestrian, ski-snowboard and ice hockey injuries.
Dr. Alison Macpherson received her PhD from the University of Toronto's Institute of Medical Science preceeded by a Master's degree in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from McGill University. Her research interests include prevention of childhood injuries in mainstream, First Nations, and Inuit children, and pediatric health services research. She is an adjunct Senior scientist at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES), a member of the LaMarsh Institute for Child and Youth Health, and a member of the Editorial Board of the journal Injury Prevention. She is currently the co-principal investigator on several CIHR grants, and holds a CIHR Chair in Maternal and Child Health Services and Policy Research.
Dr. Andrew Howard is a paediatric orthopaedic surgeon specializing in rare conditions and injuries. In addition to his surgical training, he holds a master of science in Epidemiology (1998) from the University of Ottawa. Dr. Howard’s research focuses on prevention of road traffic injuries to children, which are a leading cause of childhood death and disability. Dr. Howard also studies the causes and treatments of rare bone diseases in children, including osteogenesis imperfecta and skeletal dysplasias. In addition, Dr. Howard works with surgical colleagues from low income countries with the aim that children around the world should all be able to access safe, essential surgical care.
Pamela Fuselli, MSc is the President and CEO at Parachute. Previously at Parachute she was Vice President, Knowledge Transfer and Stakeholder Relations. Pamela was the Executive Director at Safe Kids Canada and, during her tenure, was one of the four leaders who successfully led a process of national consultation and visioning, resulting in the formation of Parachute, Canada’s national charity dedicated to injury prevention. Pamela has led publications including the Evidence Summary on the Prevention of Poisoning, in Canada, The Cost of Injury in Canada, as well as the Canadian Injury Prevention Resource and the Canadian Guideline on Concussion in Sport, both first such resources in Canada. Pamela is a principal investigator on the Canadian Concussion Network, a CIHR-funded project, where she sits on the executive committee.
Multisectoral Urban Systems for Health and Equity in Canadian Cities
Lise Gauvin PhD is a Full Professor in the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine at the Université de Montréal, a Researcher at the Research Center of the Centre Hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal (CRCHUM), and an Associate Researcher at the Léa-Roback Center on Social Inequalities of Health. Dr Gauvin currently holds an Applied Public Health Chair on Neighbourhoods, Lifestyle, and Healthy Body Weight which is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Centre de recherche en prévention de l’obésité.
Dr. Nazeem Muhajarine is Professor and Chair, Community Health and Epidemiology, University of Saskatchewan, and Research Faculty, Saskatchewan Population Health and Evaluation Research Unit (SPHERU). Nazeem is a social epidemiologist who leads the healthy children research theme at SPHERU, working with other faculty members, research staff and graduate students investigating the social determinants of children’s health. He is also the former co-director (academic) and founding member of the Community-University Institute for Social Research at the University of Saskatchewan.
Environments and Health INTERACT: INTErventions, Research, and Action in Cities Team
Daniel Fuller is an Associate Professor at the University of Saskatchewan and is a Principal Investigator on the INTERventions, Research, and Action in Cities (INTERACT) team. His research is focused on using wearable technologies to study physical activity, transportation interventions, and equity in urban spaces. Dan has an MSc in Kinesiology from the University of Saskatchewan, a PhD in Public Health from Université de Montréal. Dan is the Neighbourhood Factors Team co-lead of the Canadian Urban Environmental Health (CANUE) Research Consortium.
Yan Kestens is a Professor in the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine at the University of Montreal. He holds the CIHR Applied Public Health Chair in Urban Interventions and Population Health. He has a Ph.D. in Urban Planning (Universite Laval, Quebec City) and a postdoctoral fellowship in Spatial Epidemiology (University of Montreal).
Meghan Winters is Professor and CIHR Applied Public Health Chair in Gender and Sex in Healthy Cities at Simon Fraser University. She is an epidemiologist interested in the link between health, transportation, and city design. She received her Ph.D. in 2011 from the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia (UBC). She completed a brief post-doctoral fellowship at the Centre for Hip Health and Mobility at Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute, studying on older adults' mobility and the built environment.
T his webinar is presented in partnership with the National Collaborating Centre for Environmental Health.
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