Jessica Lowrie, UCL Communications & Marketing intern.

By 2030, globally, three in five people will live in cities. Despite the perception that city living provides an ‘urban advantage’ over those who live in rural areas, those who live in poor urban areas can often have worse health outcomes than wealthier city residents, but also in comparison to rural dwellers.

Urban and economic growth will not automatically create an ‘urban advantage’ – public policy is needed to maintain and improve conditions to allow for such an advantage to exist.

Healthy cities
This concept was the foundation for an event held by the UCL-Lancet Commission on 30 May to launch their high-profile report on Healthy Cities, published on the same day.

The report was the second from the UCL-Lancet Commission, recognising the valued commitment from both organisations to UCL’s Grand Challenges (Global Health, Sustainable Cities, Intercultural Interaction and Human Wellbeing).

The well-organised and insightful event began with introductions from Professor David Price (UCL Vice-Provost – Research) and Professor Richard Horton (Editor, the Lancet).

Professor Yvonne Rydin (UCL Bartlett School of Planning), lead author of the report, then embarked on a comprehensive overview of the report and its main findings.

Professor Rydin explained that the report aimed “to understand how better health outcomes can be delivered through interventions in urban environments in cities across the world”.

Certain components of a healthy city seem obvious: good water and sanitation infrastructures, clean air, uncontaminated land, safe homes, opportunities for safe and active mobility and effective green infrastructure.

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The latest book in the Amnesty International Global Ethics Series, published by Norton is The Human Right to Health, written by Professor Jonathan Wolff (UCL Philosophy).

On Tuesday 27 March, Amnesty International hosted a panel discussion to launch this new publication. The panel consisted of Jonathan Wolff, Mike Rowson (UCL Centre for International Health and Development) and Widney Brown (Amnesty International), and was chaired by Steve Crawshaw (Amnesty International).

Panel Discussion
Professor Wolff began by admitting that because of his philosophical roots he was a relatively recent convert to the concept of the human right to health. Despite this, his book defends the concept against multiple criticisms.

The first criticism to be discussed relates to the phrasing of “the right to the highest attainable standard of health” (United Nations).

Three routes of criticism seem to emanate from this statement, firstly, how is attainability measured – globally, nationally or regionally could give very different standards. Secondly, this seems an unreal expectation and thirdly, if this right exists – who is accountable for providing it.

A further point raised was the fact that health itself did not need to be a human right – it could be considered simply a culmination of other human rights.

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Morgan Williams, UCL School of Pharmacy, writes about the first event for the School after its merger with UCL, held on 10 January.

Everyone understands the importance of first impressions and tonight really has something of a first date feel to it.

Professor Sir John Tooke

It’s the fifth New Year Lecture that the School of Pharmacy has organised, but the first under the UCL banner. It comes just nine days after the conclusion of a merger process that’s taken up the best part of the past two years for the School.

I’d be lying if I said that it’s been an easy courtship. So, there’s a certain frisson in the air as Lord Tim Clement-Jones introduces our speaker Professor Sir John Tooke, UCL Vice-Provost (Health), to an audience at the Royal Society that is jam-packed with pharmacy movers and shakers.

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Lorna Hobbs reports on the UCL symposium ‘e-Health: Building the UCL Community’, held on 22 November.

Early terminations have been linked to breast cancer, and young people with severe mental illnesses are three times more likely to die from cardiovascular disease than the general population. These are just two examples of findings that were discovered through the linkage of electronic health records in the National Health Service.

E-health is an emerging field that involves the use of new information and communication technology to improve health and healthcare. All healthcare systems currently face numerous problems as a result of ageing populations, an increase in the prevalence of long term conditions, rising costs of healthcare and rising expectations from populations. E-health is seen as one solution to these problems, and has the potential to profoundly affect the organisation and delivery of health services.

On 22 November UCL held ‘e-Health: Building the UCL Community’. The symposium brought together UCL’s vast interdisciplinary expertise (including academics in clinical medicine, psychology, sociology, health informatics, human-computer interaction, computational science, computer science, and engineering to name but a few) with a view to fuelling future collaborations and strengthening UCL’s standing as a research centre in the area of e-Health.

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