Annual Reports
The Urban Health Collaborative's annual reports highlight our approach to addressing urban health challenges locally, nationally, and globally.
These publications are a manifestation of the work of our faculty, staff, students, and collaborators. We are proud of these achievements, which demonstrate the power of data, research, education, and partnership in making cities healthier, more equitable, and environmentally sustainable.
Annual Reports from the Urban Health Collaborative
The years 2021-2024 represented a period of growth and increased commitment to the UHC mission of improving health in cities by increasing scientific knowledge and public awareness of urban health challenges and opportunities, and by identifying and promoting actions and policies that improve population health and reduce health inequities. Increasing threats to urban health from climate change and social inequality have only made our mission more relevant than ever.
As the Urban Health Collaborative looks ahead to its tenth year in 2025, we reflect on the UHC’s growth and impact since its inception. One major area of work for the UHC includes generating evidence to support urgently needed action to address the impacts of climate change on health and health equity in cities in the US and globally.
The year 2020-2021 was another unprecedented year for cities and the UHC. A year in which faculty, staff, and students continued to connect and engage remotely, balancing work, family, and everything going on in the world around us.
UHC faculty, students, and staff continued to prioritize making visible the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. UHC data briefs highlighted the excess rates of infection, hospitalization and deaths among the African American and Latinx communities in Philadelphia. In another example, the partnership between the UHC and the Big Cities Health Coalition produced a brief examining how indoor dining contributes to spread and transmission and outlined principles for cities to follow for reopening safely.
Among many activities, the Urban Health Collaborative hosted annual Summer Institute and supported Drexel’s Climate Year.
The year 2019-2020 was an unprecedented year for cities marked not only by the COVID- 19 pandemic but also by renewed calls for racial equity and social justice, critical topics for cities all over the world.
At the Urban Health Collaborative, we were actively engaged and supporting ongoing research, training and policy translation to promote health, equity and environmental sustainability in cities. But we also pivoted to respond to the COVID pandemic.
In 2019-2020, we welcomed new partnerships and collaborations. The UHC began partnerships with Big Cities Health Coalition (BCHC) and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). We also received a 2019 Wellcome Trust Climate Change and Health Award.
The year 2018-2019 was an exciting year for the Drexel Urban Health Collaborative (UHC). After taking the time to collectively reflect on our shared goals and aspirations at a planning retreat in July 2018, we worked on implementing a new strategic plan; incubating and testing new ideas to strengthen our work, and increasing connections to the broader field of urban health.
A major highlight this year was our partnership with the Department of Public Health to develop the “Close to Home” report, describing the health of Philadelphia neighborhoods. Other exciting research projects housed at the UHC included the ongoing Pediatric Big Data project, the West Philly Promise Neighborhood Project, and SALURBAL, an international research network on urban health in Latin America