

Hosted by the Africa Community of Practice of the International Society for Urban Health, the webinar “Urban Health Data in Africa and Latin America: Experiences, Challenges and Opportunities”, is part of the Urban Health in Africa Webinar Series and was held on 23rd February 2023.
The speakers shared their experiences with collecting health data in both the African and Latin American regions including the challenges and opportunities for shared learning between these regions. Webinar participants learned from Serge Bataliack, MPH, DBA about the ongoing work at the integrated African Health Observatory, how they produce reliable health information for the African region and from Ana Diez-Roux, MD, PhD, MPH about the Latin American experience with exploring urban health data as part of the SALURBAL programme.
The meeting began with Dr. Ana Diez-Roux sharing the broad context of the SALURBAL team’s research in various cities across Latin America, collecting data to analyze the variability in urban health outcomes and mortality. Some factors guiding the studies were population, city density, mass transportation, living conditions, and access to education. She highlighted four critical aims for the project which drive healthier, environmentally sustainable and equitable cities. Following her presentation, Dr. Serge Bataliack showed the benefits of the integrated African Health Observatory, a one-stop-shop web platform for gathering and disseminating urban health data. This tool is meant to streamline data analytics and management, develop reports on urban health data, and cover many key areas in order to make the knowledge accessible to key stakeholders. Both presentations sparked in-depth discussion from participants and showcased relevant challenges, successes, and future areas for improvement of urban health data.
Following the presentations, the participants separated into breakout groups to discuss types of urban health data within primarily African and Latin American contexts, challenges to improving access to urban health data, and ways to integrate urban health data to create new knowledge.

You can find the recording of the webinar on the ISUH Youtube channel.
Speaker slides are available below:
Other Resources shared on the WEBINAR:
- Salurbal paper on model building: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1353829219306070
- Link to the integrated African Health Observatory (iAHO) platform: https://aho.afro.who.int/
- iAHO: Example of fact sheets: climate change (https://lnkd.in/g9DceMnV ), Sahel situation (https://files.aho.afro.who.int/afahobckpcontainer/production/files/The_Sahel_zone_fact_sheet.pdf ) and NCD risk factors (https://lnkd.in/dbmCH4S9)
- Atlas of African Health Statistics, 2022 – website: https://aho.afro.who.int/atlas/af
- Contact email for iAHO: iaho@who.int
- iAHO COVID hub: https://aho.afro.who.int/covid-hub/af
Find out more about the ISUH Africa Community of Practice.