May 6, 2025

For the first time in six years, one of the Urban Health Collaborative (UHC)’s signature events, the Urban Health Symposium, gathers in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – happening this year from September 4th-5th. The title of the 2025 Symposium, “Healthy Cities for the Next Decade: A Call to Action,” shapes the spirit and goals of the event – collaboration and proactivity, even through times of uncertainty.  

“There’s a tendency often in academic communities to become too distant to what might be happening in [cities], and therefore the solutions may evade us in many ways,” said Dr. John A. Rich, Director, Rush BMO Institute for Health Equity, at the inaugural Symposium in 2015. “Here, you have people who are presenting evidence, side by side with people who are doing work in these communities. That’s an unusual and very powerful mix of approaches, so we can actually address the problem.” 

Since 2015, the Urban Health Symposium has brought together researchers, practitioners, and policy makers from across the globe to inform, discuss, and energize work in urban health research, policy, and practice. Attendees come together to identify new opportunities for research, network with leaders in the field, and consider recommendations for community action and policy.  

Past iterations of the Symposium have hosted panels that include multiple sitting Commissioners of Public Health Departments from cities around the country – such as Julie Morita, Former Commissioner of the Chicago Department of Health; Abdul El-Sayed, Former Executive Director of the Detroit Health Department; and Mitchell H. Katz, Former Executive Director of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, among others.  

This upcoming Symposium will be no different. We’ll be hosting the current Directors of the Health Departments of Philadelphia, Kansas City, Cleveland, and Mecklenberg County, North Carolina – providing insights into the challenges facing their roles today. What’s more, we'll be hearing two keynote speeches sharing the experience of leading some of the most senior public health positions in the country. The first will be given by Mary T. Bassett, Director of the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University and Former Commissioner of both the New York State and New York City Departments of Health. She'll be speaking on the politics behind urban health. The second will be from Michelle Morse, current Acting Commissioner of Health, City of New York, who will be speaking on the general topic of structural and systemic racism as a driver of urban health and its implications for social movements and policy/practice writ large. 

Research and innovations in the field are also examined in front of this unique, interdisciplinary audience. Ten years ago, at our symposium in 2015, we held discussions on using social media data to inform research into population health – a method that’s now a much more common tool in research today. This year, we’ll be continuing this trend – holding sessions on novel data and novel methods in urban health, as well as sessions on the intersection of climate change and urban health featuring researchers from South Africa, Barcelona, UC San Diego, and the UC Berkely College of Environmental Design.  

“I have attended our prior three symposia (2015, 2017, 2019), each one at a different stage of my career. The new ideas that emerge from bringing together interdisciplinary practitioners and researchers at this symposium cannot be found in any other urban health venue. ” says Usama Bilal, now Co-Director of the UHC. 

With more information on the horizon for this year’s Urban Health Symposium, be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date. You can learn more about the symposium, register, as well as submit an abstract for its poster session below.  
 

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