SALURBAL-Climate

Now in its seventh year, the successful Wellcome Trust-funded Salud Urbana en América Latina (SALURBAL) or Urban Health in Latin America project — which is coordinated and convened by the UHC — has engaged more than a dozen partner institutions across Latin America and the U.S. Additional funding recently awarded to “SALURBAL-Climate” will allow the team to address the critical need for evidence linking climate change to health impacts across Latin America. The expanded project is co-coordinated by the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia.

The project will build upon the unprecedented SALURBAL data resource (available at data. lacurbanhealth.org), which encompasses nearly 400 cities across 11 counties and includes data on mortality, demographics, health risk factors, and physical, natural, and socioeconomic environments – in many cases at the city, sub-city, and neighborhood levels.

SALURBAL-Climate will leverage and expand this data resource to support research on the impacts of climate-related exposures including extreme temperatures, droughts, floods, and air pollution on health and health inequities. Team members will also explore the role of city and neighborhood-level factors in exacerbating or buffering these impacts.

“SALURBAL-Climate represents a unique opportunity to document the inequitable impacts of climate change that we are already seeing across Latin American cities, and to provide policy-relevant evidence of the health impacts of various adaptation and mitigation options to support decision making,” said Olga L. Sarmiento, PhD, professor in the department of Public Health at the School of Medicine, Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá and co-PI of SALURBAL-Climate. “UniAndes is thrilled to partner with Drexel University to support our diverse, multinational, interdisciplinary team and drive the type of research and capacity building that is urgently needed across the region.”

Two Health Impact Assessments developed as part of SALURBAL-Climate will examine the impacts of urban interventions in Bogotá, Colombia and Santiago, Chile. The team will also apply comparative risk assessment tools to model the impact of potential urban climate adaptation and mitigation strategies. A series of capacity strengthening activities will address needs at the individual, institutional, and societal levels to support climate change and urban health research and practice community.

By reinforcing and expanding SALURBAL's network of community and policy partnerships, SALURBAL-Climate will engage a network of local and regional partners to inform research, capacity strengthening, and advocacy and ensure project activities respond to local and regional needs and priorities.

Learn more: drexel.edu/lac/salurbal