Welcome to the 2023 Urban Health Council Programme run by Centric Lab.
Historically, The Urban Health Council has focused on reports and scientific investigations. We have now reached a new phase where we are ready to create time and space for co-learning. This means this year our programming will be designed as a learning experience and curriculum.
This year we have three intentions;
To put into practice our current research library alongside professionals, patients, and communities. To do this, we will be holding small and intimate discussions and workshops to ensure people are understood and to generate lasting impact.
We will also be revisiting past research reports with a broad virtual audience to help seed narratives and imaginations in ecological healing.
Open a new scientific investigation to continue our knowledge growth as a lab that provides communities with ecological health information. We will also be starting new scientific work on the relationship between the external microbiome and the Gut x Brain axis. This is deepening our understanding of the interplay between habitat health, human health, and climate change.
LAUNCHING 21 MARCH
The array of Centric tools and datasets, such as the Biological Inequity Index, have been created by making the most of the data available to support health justice work. There are limitations to how it has been done so far because macro environmental data is an investment and requires an ecosystem that will give it context to be funded, collected, and shared.
This report builds on the Steps to Macro Environmental Data for Health Justice pamphlet to identify the ecosystem for macro environmental data that can support health justice causes and the role key players play in making this data fit for purpose and accessible.
LAUNCHING 23 MARCH
This roundtable will focus on redefining obesity to reflect both current epidemiological research and justice frameworks. In practice, this means challenging the current medical narrative which blames people for this complex disease as it centres behaviour rather than environment as its root cause. The shame many patients are led to feel through the individualisation narrative of obesity only slows their healing process.
This Reading Club event is based on the research article by Dr. Marie Müller from 2022. A group discussion will take place unpacking insights from the article and explore depression, the most common mental health disorder worldwide, is more than a mental disorder—it is a physical disorder too.
LAUNCHING 21 April 2023
This imagination lab will bring together Indigenous specialists from all over the world to discuss integrating Traditional Ecological Knowledges (TEK) and Indigenous wisdoms equitably and honestly into urban planning - without appropriation or reductionism.
LAUNCHING 27 April 2025
This roundtable will focus on the Trans lived experience and how it relates to disease. This is to understand the nuances of Trans healing and health justice.
LAUNCHING 9 MAY
This event is a chance to introduce the purpose of the Macro Environmental Data for Health Justice (MED for HJ) project as well as introduce the first two supporting documents: Steps to Macro Environmental Data for Health Justice and An Macro Environmental Data Ecosystem for Health Justice.
The agenda for the year will be discussed as well as the opportunity to give feedback on how this project can support current campaigns and further elaborate on the role of key players, such as funder, data specialists, and health justice journalists.
LAUNCHING 18 MAY
We will be co-learning about the mental stress and burden of air pollution that coincides with our report earlier in the year.
LAUNCHING 25 May 2025
This roundtable will focus on the various and unique pathways of poor health that current children are facing.
We will be holding a co-learning session to discuss how geospatial data can help us (activists, campaigners, policymakers, and healthcare practitioners) identify areas where systemic discrimination is having the most acute effects.
LAUNCHING 15 June 2023
In this Imagination Lab will be exploring the epistemological roots for “Right to Pollute” policies. We will be seeding how we can use this understanding to unpick and reshape environmental policies that protect industry rather than planet and people.
LAUNCHING 5th SEPTEMBER
The Macro Environmental Data for Health Justice mission directly aims to improve the potential of community advocates in leading health justice campaigns with data. In this report we’ll be presenting case studies that will combine with the results of the surveys earlier in the year with interviews from a sample of each key player in the wider macro data ecosystem.
In this reading club, we will discuss as a group the data analysis from the 2021 data study on this intersectional demographic and the suggested action points for improving their relationship with their social, economic, and urban infrastructure.
LAUNCHING 19th SEPTEMBER
This event is a chance for those who participated in the case studies to introduce themselves and their campaign work and experiences to the MED for HJ/Centric community. Other highlights from the MED for HJ Case Studies report and media will be presented.
LAUNCHING 10th OCTOBER
This report will be a summary and reflection on the MED for HJ research in ways that are accessible for each key player and provide insights on what can come from this work.
LAUNCHING 24th OCTOBER
This townhall is a final event to look at the MED for HJ Impact Report and bring people together to look at some next steps that can meaningfully support collaborations, proposals, showcasing, and more so health justice can frame and be supported by more macro environmental data.
LAUNCHING: 21st November 2023
We will be exploring the pathway between the external microbiome, our gut environment and the brain. It will be presented as a “position paper” to understand how displacement and environmental pollutants disrupt the pathway and how this disruption relates to planetary health and Indigenous urban health.
LAUNCHING: 30th November 2023
We will be joined by microbial ecologist Jake Robinson who guided this report.
The report explores the pathway between the external microbiome, our gut environment and the brain. It will be presented as a “position paper” to understand how displacement and environmental pollutants disrupt the pathway and how this disruption relates to planetary health and Indigenous urban health.
Key Dates for the Year
LAUNCHING: 23 February 2026
In partnership with multiple scientists from University College, Centric launched an investigation into the trauma experienced in urban environments and PTSD. This is the report that launched the idea of the Urban Health Council in 2020. We will now be revisiting this report through a live event. The environmental exposures found in cities and the cost of living crisis are all putting a heavy burden on human health in the UK. Therefore to achieve health justice we must understand how societal factors driven by oppressive systems affect our health.
LAUNCHING: 14 February 2026
This report is a collaboration between the Centric team and Urban Health Council members Rhiannon Osborne and Guppi Bola. It is a 4 part audio mini-series exploring the link between the exploitative nature of capitalism, planetary dysregulation, and health.
This report will look at the mental burden caused by experiencing the injustice of environmental hazards such as air pollution.