PUKAR’s Health Conference Presentations Now Available!
January 2nd, 2012 by admin
The Healthy Cities, Wealthy Cities website has been updated to include most of the abstracts and presentations made by PUKAR and Harvard School of Public Health researchers at the International Conference on Urban Health. All of this work is based on research from the Kaula Bandar slum community. Presentations can be found on topics ranging from GIS mapping of the community to childhood immunization rates and adult obesity rates.
This is part of an effort to make our health research open-access and easily available online. Check out our work here.
PUKAR presents its research at ICUH
November 28th, 2011 by admin
The sixth International Conference on Urban Health (ICUH) took place in Belo Horizonte, Brazil from November 1-5, 2011. The conference addressed the issue of urban health action toward equity, focusing on the positive consequences in urban health interventions, as well as the social and public health policies that were required to address these issues.
Six presentations were made by researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), Harvard Medical School (HMS) and PUKAR on research findings from studies conducted in Kaula Bandar, a slum community in Mumbai city. These included a qualitative investigation of women’s delivery location in urban slum-dwelling India, diarrheal episodes and health practices of families in an urban slum in Mumbai, inequality of formal support systems during disasters for the vulnerable residents in an unregistered slum, failures in quality, quantity, and reliability of water provided through an informal distribution system in a slum, simple, affordable methods to map and analyze health data within a densely populated urban slum and the association between obesity and urban exposure in the Mumbai slum of Kaula Bandar.
PUKAR team members Kiran Sawant and Ramnath Subbaraman participated in an orientation tour of an urbanization program in Brazil that transforms slums and agglomerates in neighbourhoods so as to improve the life quality of the dwellers. Spearheaded by Vila Viva the project also addresses social and cultural demands, like the need of coexistence, recreation, education and job generation.
The conference provided PUKAR with a platform to present research findings to a global audience of public health experts. Another significant outcome included the opportunity to network with other development organizations working on urban health related issues in India and share strategies. PUKAR team members were also able to divulge their future plans to funding agencies present at the conference and in the process tap potential donors.
Abstracts Accepted for the International Conference on Urban Health!
August 25th, 2011 by admin
Six research abstracts from PUKAR’s health project have been accepted for presentation at the 2011 International Conference on Urban Health (ICUH), which will take place in Belo Horizonte, Brazil from November 1-5. All of these findings represent studies performed in Kaula Bandar by the PUKAR research team in conjunction with researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and Harvard Medical School (HMS).
The presentations at the ICUH will allow the project’s research to reach a global audience of public health experts.
The following are the abstracts accepted for presentation (please note that co-authors are not included on this list):
Title: Nobody’s here with me: a qualitative investigation of women’s delivery location in urban slum-dwelling India
Submitted by: Laura Khan (HSPH)
Selected for: Oral-poster presentation
Title: The association between obesity and urban exposure in the Mumbai slum of Kaula Bandar
Submitted by: Jennifer O’Brien (HSPH)
Selected for: Oral presentation
Title: Lean on me: inequality of formal support systems during disasters for the vulnerable residents in an unregistered slum
Submitted by: Kiran Sawant, Shrutika Shitole, Tejal Shitole (PUKAR)
Selected for: Oral presentation
Title: Diarrheal episodes and health practices of families in an urban slum in Mumbai
Submitted by: Hanni Stoklosa (HMS)
Selected for: Poster presentation
Title: Failures in quality, quantity, and reliability of water provided through an informal distribution system in a slum in Mumbai, India
Submitted by: Ramnath Subbaraman (PUKAR)
Selected for: Oral presentation
Title: Simple, affordable methods to map and analyze health data within a densely populated urban slum
Submitted by: Dana Thomson (HSPH)
Selected for: Oral presentation
For more information on the 2011 International Conference on Urban Health in Brazil, please see the following website: http://www.icuh2011.com/
Advocacy with BMC
December 27th, 2010 by admin
The Mumbai Municipal Health Commissioner and Director of Hospitals are now planning a new strategy for public health in Mumbai over the next 10 years. As part of this process, they are holding a series of consultative sessions with various health stakeholders in the city. For the first of these consultative sessions, they invited 16 major health NGO’s to present their work so as to determine out how NGOs can collaborate with the government. PUKAR team members from the Healthy Cities Wealthy Cities project were invited to present their data at this forum.
The talk was very well-received by all present especially on account of the lack of information available on health statistics of unregistered slums in the city. The Municipal Health Commissioner specifically requested her colleagues to look into health issues in Kaula Bandar and give feedback regarding BMC health outreach there.
This forum provided the team with a first step towards advocating to the city on behalf of Kaula Bandar. Since the community does not receive many government services this gave the team an opportunity to start a discussion that may lead the government to eventually address this issue. The team plans to follow up with the Municipal Commissioner on the outcome of this initial discussion.
The Healthy Cities, Wealthy Cities website has been updated to include most of the abstracts and presentations made by PUKAR and Harvard School of Public Health researchers at the International Conference on Urban Health. All of this work is based on research from the Kaula Bandar slum community. Presentations can be found on topics ranging from GIS mapping of the community to childhood immunization rates and adult obesity rates.
