On November 26th – 30th, 2018 at Kampala, Uganda, the 15th International Conference on Urban Health took place. It was organized by The International Society on Urban Health,The International Science Council, The New York Academy of Medicine, The Science Research Health Organization, ELSEVIER, The World Urban Campaign, Centro de Estudios de Geografía y Ordenamiento Territorial, The InterAcademy Partnership and The International Geographical Union Commission on Health and The Environment, Botnar Foundation, Novartis, Wellcome Trust, Novo Nordisk, and others.
The Conference had the main theme of “Managing Urbanization for Health, a Priority for all Nations”. It was aimed to convene experts, practitioners, stakeholders, emerging scientists to discuss about a diversity of topics related to urban health from their own experience from around the world.
This five-day conference included a diversity of activities such as workshops, plenaries, discussion panels, and early career scientist abstract presentations, to promote an interactive exchange of experiences, challenges, successful cases, urban health models, science researches and updated data about an infinity of topics related to Urban Health.
ISC presented a discussion panel conformed by representatives from the three regional offices. The panel was chaired by Prof Saroj Jayasinghe, Member of the Science Committee of the ISC program in Urban Health and Wellbeing. This panel started with the presentation of The Salvadoran Urban Health Model given by Claudia Marroquín from ISC Regional Office of Latin America and Caribbean. Soon after this, José Siri, from United Nations University provided Background Urban Health Information. Then, the African Science Plan on Urban Health and Human Wellbeing was presented by Charles Wambebe, from the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Tshwane University of Technology in Pretoria, South Africa, ISC Regional Office for Africa; Impact on Health and Wellbeing as a Consequence of Rapid Urbanization in the Asia-Pacific Region: The Role of Epigenetics, presented by Javed Iqbal, Chair, Urban Health and Wellbeing Science Plan, ISC Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific. The presentation was followed by a Q & A session in which it was possible to further discuss about this Urban Health thematic.