Slum Health

Health status in the world’s burgeoning urban slums, home to over 1 billion people, is the product of myriad and complex factors – social, geographic, historical, economic, and political – in addition to the obvious ones of poverty, inadequate access to clean water and sanitation, over-crowding, etc.  Looking forward, climate change, population dynamics and economic globalization will increasingly affect these challenges and shape options in response.  The search for solutions to the problem of health in slums therefore requires not only better data on the spectrum and burden of disease morbidity but also an integrative understanding of its determining factors, matched by creative multidisciplinary insights, tools and methodologies in the design of interventions.