Urban Health Research: Study Designs and Potential Challenges

Abstract

According to World Health Organization (1948), health is defined as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. In terms of this definition, urban health is referred to as the health of population living in the city or town (Galea and Vlahov 2005). More than half of the world population currently live in urban areas (approximately one-third of them are estimated to live in marginal settlements or slums (UN-Habitat 2003)) and virtually most of the world population growth from now on will be in cities (Leon 2008). For example, the urban population is projected to increase by 1.6 billion by 2030 while the rural population shrinks by 28 million. Although people migrate to cities for a better life and income (Cohen 2004), urbanisation is also considered as a health hazard for certain vulnerable populations. The demographic shift due to rapid and uncontrolled urbanisation also creates a humanitarian disaster (Patel and Burke 2009). These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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