SALURBAL team members participate in the 2019 Planetary Health Annual Meeting in Palo Alto, California
September 7, 2019
Palo Alto, California, USA
On September 5th and 6th, researchers from the Salud Urbana en America Latina (SALURBAL) project participated and presented their research at the Planetary Health Annual Meeting in Palo Alto, California. The event was organized by the Planetary Health Alliance, and Stanford University’s Woods Institute for the Environment as well as its Center for Innovation in Global Health.
The meeting convened more than 400 researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and students. The participants were convened at Stanford University where they heard presentations, participated in interactive workshops, and engaged in discussions to work towards the overarching objective of “catalyzing efforts towards resolving the great planetary health crises of our time.” View the agenda.
SALURBAL participation
Olga Lucia Sarmiento (Universidad de los Andes, Colombia), Daniel Rodriguez (University of California-Berkeley), Claire Slesinski (Drexel University), Nancy Lopez Olmedo (Instituto Nacional de Salud Pública, Mexico), and Diana Higuera Mendieta (Universidad de los Andes, Colombia) all attended and participated in the conference in representation of the SALURBAL project. Other LAC-Urban Health members, including Rodrigo Mora (Universidad de Chile), David Rojas-Rueda (IS Global), and José Siri (Wellcome Trust) were also in attendance.
Olga Lucia Sarmiento presented SALURBAL’s evaluation of the TransMiCable cable car and urban redevelopment program, and work to evaluate the health and environmental impact of Ciclovias, during the plenary panel, “Cities and the Planet: How Urban Ecosystems Impact the Planet,” alongside Jo Ivey Boufford, President of the International Society for Urban Health and other panelists.
All plenary presentations can be viewed on the YouTube channel of the Planetary Health alliance.
Diana Higuera Mendieta presented baseline results from the TransMiCable evaluation during a poster session. Nancy Lopez Olmedo also presented a poster on her SALURBAL research focused on the impact of extreme weather events in cities in Mexico on the consumption of foods of various levels of processing, and how that consumption varies depending on the climate region (e.g. arid, tropical, etc.) of that city.
During a pre-conference satellite session, Claire Slesinski and Rodrigo Mora participated in lively conversations with members of the Planetary Health Alliance working to initiate a regional network for Planetary Health. The group discussed linkages between LAC-Urban Health, SALURBAL, and this new network.
The next Planetary Health Annual Meeting will take place in São Paulo, Brazil in 2021.
