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Programme
Biographies and Partner profiles

About the Conference

The European Urban Health Conference will showcase the results of our extensive research into individual level urban health indicators. The EURO-URHIS 2 study, which was co-funded by the EU Commission, has resulted in the largest depository of individual level urban health data in the world and the conference will be the first chance to see the results and some of the conclusions from the analysis, with a view to helping develop urban health policy.

The EURO-URHIS 2 study encompasses 44 cities in 14 different countries from the European Union and beyond. Nearly 50,000 people have been surveyed on over 100 indicators of urban health. As a result, we have the first directly comparable data on urban health indicators between different urban areas.

We are expecting delegates from around the world for this conference, with guest speakers from the World Health Organisation, the International Society for Urban Health and the European Public Health Association. It will be an excellent opportunity to network with, and see presentations from experts in urban health who do not normally present in Europe.

As well as the talks from guest speakers and members of the EURO-URHIS 2 team, there will be workshops. These will include:

• Training of the EURO-URHIS 2 health indicators and other resources
• A demonstration of the implementation of urban health indicators
• Knowledge exchange and best practice for urban health monitoring methodology, analyses and reporting
• Up to date urban health policy development
• A showcase for your research and impact measures, best practice and ideas for future work

Click here for Hotel accommodation

Speakers

From the World Health Organisation

Dr Megumi Kano, WHO Centre for Health Development (WHO Kobe Centre)

Dr Megumi Kano has been a Technical Officer for the World Health Organization (WHO) Centre for Health Development in Kobe, Japan, since 2009. Her areas of focus are urban health metrics development and health equity reduction. She currently leads the centre’s work on ageing and health particularly in collaboration with Japanese researchers. Previously, she was a Senior Researcher of the Southern California Injury Prevention Research Center at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), focusing on public health issues related to disaster situations. She received her doctorate in public health from the UCLA School of Public Health

Amit Prasad, Health Economist, World Health Organisation

Mr. Prasad is a health economist working with the World Health Organization (WHO) in Kobe, Japan. He has coordinated the development of WHO’s Urban Health Equity Assessment and Response Tool (Urban HEART), which is increasingly being used by cities, globally, for planning and monitoring action. Currently, he leads WHO’s initiatives on urban health metrics and works closely with country officials on capacity building and developing global standards on metrics. Previously, he has worked for several years in WHO (Geneva), and at the Harvard School of Public Health. Mr. Prasad received his education in economics and international development from Harvard University.

From the International society of Urban Health

Professor Waleska Caiaffa, Professor of Epidemiology, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil

Professor Waleska Teixeira Caiaffa is Professor of Epidemiology at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. She is also a consultant for the Ministry of Health in Brazil, and was the Principal Investigator of two multicentre studies on Harm Reduction and HIV/AIDS in Brazil in 1998 and in 2000-2001. She received the National Institutes of Health, Individual National Research Award, Postdoctoral fellowship, ADAMHA -NIDA, and the Fogarty International Training Grant, National Institutes of Health, United States Public Health Service.

Professor Mark McCarthy Emeritus Professor of public health, University College London

Professor McCarthy holds an MB BChir University of Cambridge/University College Hospital Medical School, an MSc Social Medicine at the London School of Hygiene, and a PhD at the London School of Economics. Furthermore Professor McCarthy is a Fellow of the UK Faculty of Public Health and Royal College of Physicians (England). Professor McCarthy has lead public health research within UCL, establishing links for public health research across Europe, and working with the European Public Health Association. Professor McCarthy has worked within many roles in public health including creating and taking the position of a partner in PHIRE (Public Heath Innovation and Research in Europe) 2010 - 2012, funded by the European Commission's Directorate for Health and Consumers, which is assessing uptake and impact at member state level of projects within the European Commission's public health programme. Professor McCarthy’s main research interests are based around urban health determinants (particularly transport and health), including the UK Department of Health research grant to investigate statistical modeling in health impact assessment, and work for both the public sector (e.g. assessment of the London Olympics transport plan) and private sector (e.g. assessments of oil developments in Russia and Middle East).

Dr. Carlos Castillo-Salgado, Professor at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University

Dr. Carlos Castillo-Salgado is a Professor of the Department of Epidemiology of the Bloomberg School of Public Health with joint appointments in the Department of Health Policy and Management and the School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University. Also, Dr. Castillo-Salgado is a Courtesy Professor of the College of Public Health, University of South Florida, Invited Professor of the National Institute of Public Health, Mexico and Visiting Professor in most of the schools of public health in Latin America and Spain. He received a J.D. with Honorable Mention in 1972 from the Law School of the Universidad Autonoma de Guadalajara, an M.D. (Médico Cirujano) in 1978 from the Facultad de Medicina, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, an M.P.H. and Dr.PH. for the School of Hygiene and Public Health, Johns Hopkins University (1981 and 1988). He is board certified in Public Health (CPH) from the National Board of Public Health Examiners and Member of the NBPHE’s Charter Class (2008).

Richard Rothenberg, Regents' Professor, Institute of Public Health, Georgia State University

Richard Rothenberg, MD MPH FACP, is Regents' Professor in the Institute of Public Health of the Georgia State University. He currently heads the Research Core of the Center of Excellence for the study of Health Disparities within the Institute, and is actively engaged, as well, in research pursuits in Sexually Transmitted Infections and HIV/AIDS. He teaches epidemiology for master's and doctoral candidates in the Institute and is the Editor-in-Chief of the Annals of Epidemiology.

Anders Foldspang, Regents' Professor, School of Public Health, University of Aarhus, Denmark

Professor of Public Health/Health Services Research. Previously Associate Professor of medical sociology; Director of the MPH programme at Aarhus University; Director and Dean, the Nordic School of Public Health; Past President, of the Association of Schools of Public Health in the European region (ASPHER); co-chair, ASPHER’s Honour Committee; co-chair, ASPHER’s working group on core competences; initiated the European core competences programme (2006), when he was President of ASPHER; Fellow through Distinction of the Faculty of Public Health, UK. Various research topics within public health including epidemiology and health services research.

From the EURO-URHIS2 project

Arpana Verma, University of Manchester

Arpana is currently a Senior Lecturer in Public Health at the University of Manchester and Honorary Consultant in the NHS. She graduated in medicine from the University of Manchester in 1995 and worked as a respiratory physician until moving to public health in 2003. She has a PhD, Masters in Public Health and is a Member of the Faculty of Public Health in the UK. She is the principal investigator and coordinator of the European Urban Health Indicator System project (EURO-URHIS 2 www.urhis.eu) and has set up the Manchester Urban Collaboration on Health (MUCH http://www.medicine.manchester.ac.uk/oeh/research/publichealth). She is also president of the Urban Health section for the European Public Health Association – EUPHA (http://www.eupha.org/site/section_page.php?section_ref=S_UPH and email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ).

Erik van Ameijden, Municipal health service of Utrecht (GG & GD)

Erik van Ameijden started his working career in 1989 as an epidemiologist at the Municipal Health Service in Amsterdam, mainly on infectious diseases (STD, TB, HIV/AIDS, travelers’ diseases) and addiction epidemiology. His PhD thesis (1994) was on the epidemiology of HIV/AIDS and the evaluation of AIDS prevention measures among drug users. In 1995, he worked at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He was director of the Amsterdam Cohort Studies on HIV/AIDS since 1996. After 10 years, he worked for 2 years at the Trimbos Institute (National Institute of mental Health and Addiction) in Utrecht as head of the Department of Epidemiology. Since 2001 he has been head of the Department of Epidemiology and Information at the Municipal Health Service in Utrecht. This current affiliation concerns Public Health Epidemiology in general, including health monitoring and intervention research (community interventions, evaluation of specific projects, etc), with regard to a broad range of topics such as morbidity and mortality, lifestyle, infectious diseases, social and physical environment, addiction and mental health, socioeconomic and ethnic health differences, and health care wants and needs. Since 2005, Erik van Ameijden has honorary appointments at the Julius Centre for Health Sciences and Primary Care, University Medical Centre Utrecht, and the Public Health Department of the University of Manchester. Throughout his career, he was consultant for international organisations, and coordinated a variety of (inter)national collaborations. He is author of over 100 scientific publications in peer reviewed journals, and another 100 reports on health research and policy. His teaching experience includes courses in epidemiology at the universities of Amsterdam and Utrecht, and supervision and mentorship of 12 PhD students.

Chris Birt, University of Liverpool

Chris Birt is a public health physician, employed by the University of Liverpool (Division of Public Health) and by Sefton Primary Care Trust (PCT). His longstanding interests have been cardiovascular epidemiology and prevention, and (partly leading on from this) public health epidemiology and management at European Union (EU) level. Thus, in the early 1990s he was involved in the establishment of the European Public Health Alliance (EPHA). Over 1993-1995 he assisted the European Commission (EC) to develop some of its first public health programmes, while working at the University of Birmingham. Since 2000 he has worked in Merseyside, and set up (for the whole North West Health Region in England) the North West Health Brussels Office (NWHBO). Over this period he also set up Heart of Mersey, an influential and respected cardiovascular diseases prevention project, which is also involved in relevant activities at EU level (it manages the EU Healthy Stadia Project), and which is funded by PCTs and local authorities in Merseyside and Cheshire; Chris is Co-Chair of the Board of Trustees for Heart of Mersey. Chris Birt can claim to be responsible for EURO-URHIS; hoping to agree a basis for application for DG SANCO for funding for the first stage of this, he arranged the first meeting, in the University of Liverpool, to discuss this possibility. For EURO-URHIS 2 he is a member of the Management Team and leads Work Package (WP) 4.

Arnoud Verhoeff, Municipal Health Service, Amsterdam

Arnoud Verhoeff (1960, epidemiologist) Has been head of the department of Epidemiology, Documentation and Health Promotion of the Public Health Service Amsterdam, the Netherlands, since 1996. Before that he was working for ten years as a staff member of the department of Environmental Medicine at the same public health service. In 1994 he got his PhD at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The topic of his research was the relationship between home dampness, mould and house dust mites and respiratory symptoms in children. After his PhD he spent one year as a visiting scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, United States of America. Since 2006 he was appointed as the professor of Urban Health and Health Care at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Dan Pope, University of Liverpool

Dr Pope is currently a lecturer in epidemiology based in the Division of Public Health at The University of Liverpool. I am also an honorary senior research fellow at The University of Manchester. I graduated in psychology from The University of Bolton (BSc hons) before obtaining an MSc (1995) and PhD (1998) from The University of Manchester specialising in population based research into musculoskeletal pain. My PhD focussed on the relationship between psychosocial working environment and the development of back and upper limb pain and was funded with a COLT foundation fellowship. In 2001 I secured my current position and have developed research interests in (i) respiratory illness associated with indoor air pollution in mothers and children from low income countries, (ii) barriers to access to health care for mothers and children in low income countries and (iii) assessment of population physical and psychological health in Europe. My teaching responsibilities include being a lead on research methods modules for the Masters in Public Health at The University of Liverpool and in partnership with Laureate. I also convene on modules for the MBChB undergraduate curriculum.