This past October 16th-18th, Dr. Manuel Limonta, regional director for ISC ROLAC, attended a symposium called “Belt & Road Symposium on Urban Health and Wellbeing in the Asia-Pacific Region”, which was held at the Institute of Urban Environment (IUE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Technology (CAS), and was organized by IUE, CAS, the Global Program on Systems for Science for Urban Health and Wellbeing (ICSU) UHWB ), ISC ROAP, and ISUH.The event is primarily an attempt to promote trade among B & R countries. Healthy economics, however, need healthy people and healthy environments, which is at the core of China’s vision to build a Health Silk Road in cooperation with the WHO. While urban health can combine the various health-related urban initiatives, B & R can bring people together to synthesize the knowledge on how to achieve and measure urban health across the region.
There were several presentations. Some of them by Dr. Charles Glover, of ISC ROAP; Dr. Youngguan Zhu, from the urban environment institute; Prof. Juan Vela and Dr. Carlos Barcelo, both from Cuba; Dr. Franz Gatzweiler, UH WV program exec. Director; and another presentation by Dr. Manuel Limonta, regional director of ISC ROLAC, who presented the Salvadoran urban health model.