Steering Group

for Urban Health Capacity Building

In the face of a global climate and health crisis, it is our central motivation to quicken the pace of scientific knowledge transfer and tools that capacitate current and future professionals with skills (knowledge, technical and soft skills) for creating evidence-based projects. Moreover, establish a transdisciplinary working culture across researchers, practitioners, and experts to assist urban development policymakers and public officers in making informed, efficient, and timely decisions.

The UrbanCare Capacity Building Hub is a project for Higher Education Institutes (HEI) to develop five learning modules in fields that WHO and UN determine as a priority to close the gap between ‘can and do’ in the climate and health crises. Two modules are for practical training and three for capacity-building:
(i) Data Management; (ii) Environmental Health Impact Assessment; (iii) Urban Health Policy Planning; (iv) Health-centred Urban Planning and Design and; (v) Urban Health and Development Management.
Click to learn more about UrbanCare.

A steering group composed of diverse and highly experienced researchers, practitioners, and policymakers will focus on quality assurance, problem-solving, decision-making of work plans and activities of the project.

Alvaro Valera Sosa

Alvaro Valera Sosa

UrbanCare Research & Technical Development

In 2018, Alvaro founded the Building Health Lab and created UrbanCare. He is an architect with over 20 years of experience. During his practice designing hospitals, his vision to combine health and architecture got him accepted to study public health at the Charité Medical University of Berlin in 2010. Thereon, Alvaro joined the TU-Berlin as an E-b design researcher, conducting numerous evaluation projects in various countries to improve pedestrian planning and urban health. He is also the commissioning editor for the Cities & Health Journal and a public health vocal for GLOHRA.

Charlotte Marchandise

Charlotte Marchandise

Urban Health Policy & Governance Specialist

Charlotte is an international expert on empowerment and governance, esp. in the fields of global and urban health, resilience, and the environment. From 2014 to 2020 she was elected deputy Mayor of Rennes and president of the French and European WHO Healthy Cities Network. As a project leader, spokesperson, and advocacy expert she promotes intersectoral actions that can lead to healthier settings focusing on equity and E-b decisions.

Sujata Karve

Sujata Karve

Climate & Environmental Architecture Specialist

Architect with over 20 years of experience in academia and 10 years in sustainable planning and environmental design consultancy. She is presently the Head of the Department of M. Arch (Environmental Architecture) at BNCA, Pune, India. Her research focus areas are environmental psychology, spatial behavior, space syntax, and comfort studies.

Sarah Morris Jones

Sarah Morris Jones

Green Infrastructure planning & Landscape Architecture

Sarah is a landscape architect and urbanist with over 20 years of experience in the UK and abroad. With vast experience in urban environment projects: retrofit, brownfield sites, and estates from regional and city size to microsites. She’s a Director of Landsmith Associates, a Fellow of the Landscape Institute, Building with Nature Associate, and a Design Council Expert focusing on health, wildlife, and water for a climate-resilient and biodiverse future from policy to design to post-occupation evaluation.

Ben Cave

Ben Cave

Environmental Health Impact Assessment Specialist

Ben in an expert in Strategic Environmental Assessments, public policy, governance, sustainability, and both traditional and innovative ways to involve and consult with the public. Former President at the International Association for Impact Assessment and is founder and partner at Ben Cave Associates Ltd (UK) and BCA Insight Ltd (Ireland).

Alessandra Bianchi

Alessandra Bianchi

Urban Environmental and Traffic Psychology Specialist

Alessandra is a psychologist and holds a doctoral degree in Psychology from the Universidade of Barcelona (UB), Spain. She has vast experience in traffic psychology, road safety, pedestrian safety, mobility, and educational psychology. As a professor at the Universidade Federal do Paraná, Alessandra has conducted research on environmental psychology and traffic safety in cities of Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and Spain focused in evaluating large national databases on commuting accidents.

Arturo Gleason

Arturo Gleason

Water Sensitive Urban Planning and Design Specialist

Arturo is a researcher accredited by the National Council for Science and Technology of the federal government of Mexico. He is the leader of the Research Group Technology and management for Sustainable Architecture and Urbanism at the University of Guadalajara. He is the founder and Honorary Director of the IITAAC, Water Technological Research Institute, as well the founder and the first president of the Mexican Rainwater Catchment Systems Association (AMSCALL).

Flavia Goldsworthy

Flavia Goldsworthy

Landscape Architect and Horticultural Designer

Flavia is a leading horticultural designer and landscape architect with over 20 years of practical design experience across the UK and worldwide. Her specialist skills lie in creating rich, layered biodiverse landscapes. Her work showcases an ecologically sensitive and sustainable approach to design in the urban realm. This creates dynamic, elegant, and inspiring spaces beneficial to humans, nature, and the environment.

Partnerships and Collaborations

Building Health Lab works closely with academia and research institutions in studying the urban pathways which create healthy cities. We bring together a constellation of mindful doers committted to improving care processes for people and the planet. 

 

UrbanCare cooperation partners