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Volume 15 Supplement 1

Healthy Polis: Challenges and Opportunities for Urban Environmental Health and Sustainability

Edited by Sotiris Vardoulakis, Paul Wilkinson and Keith Dear.

Publication of this supplement has not been supported by sponsorship. Information about the source of funding for publication charges can be found in the individual articles. The articles have been through the journal's standard peer review process for supplements.

Supplement Editor competing interests: PW has received research funding to his employing institution from the Natural Environment Research Council, the Wellcome Trust, the European Commission and the National Institute for Health Research on projects relating to sustainability and health in relation to the built environment. SV is the Head of Environmental Change Department of Public Health England. Four papers (Arbuthnott et al., Salmond et al., Heaviside et al., Woods et al.) in this supplement have been co-authored by SV or members of SV's department. Peer review of these papers was supervised by another Guest Editor, Prof Keith Dead, who made editorial decisions. SV is a member of the stakeholder committee for the UCL Complex Built Environment Systems (SBES) Group, which submitted one of the papers recommended for publication (Macmillan et al.). The paper was independently peer reviewed by an external reviewer as well as by another Guest Editor (Paul Wilkinson). SV holds honorary academic affiliations with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the University of Birmingham, and Exeter University. SV has received research funding to their employing institution (PHE) from the European Commission and the National Institute for Health Research on projects relating to urban environmental health and sustainability. KD declares no competing interests.

  1. Cities around the world face many environmental health challenges including contamination of air, water and soil, traffic congestion and noise, and poor housing conditions exacerbated by unsustainable urban de...

    Authors: Sotiris Vardoulakis, Keith Dear and Paul Wilkinson
    Citation: Environmental Health 2016 15(Suppl 1):S30
  2. Climate change is a global threat to health and wellbeing. Here we provide findings of an international research project investigating the health and wellbeing impacts of policies to reduce greenhouse gas emis...

    Authors: Clive E. Sabel, Rosemary Hiscock, Arja Asikainen, Jun Bi, Mike Depledge, Sef van den Elshout, Rainer Friedrich, Ganlin Huang, Fintan Hurley, Matti Jantunen, Spyros P. Karakitsios, Menno Keuken, Simon Kingham, Periklis Kontoroupis, Nino Kuenzli, Miaomiao Liu…
    Citation: Environmental Health 2016 15(Suppl 1):S25
  3. The UK government has an ambitious goal to reduce carbon emissions from the housing stock through energy efficiency improvements. This single policy goal is a strong driver for change in the housing system, bu...

    Authors: Alexandra Macmillan, Michael Davies, Clive Shrubsole, Naomi Luxford, Neil May, Lai Fong Chiu, Evelina Trutnevyte, Yekatherina Bobrova and Zaid Chalabi
    Citation: Environmental Health 2016 15(Suppl 1):S37
  4. There is increasing appreciation of the proportion of the health burden that is attributed to modifiable population exposure to environmental health hazards. To manage this avoidable burden in the United Kingd...

    Authors: Mae Woods, Helen Crabbe, Rebecca Close, Mike Studden, Ai Milojevic, Giovanni Leonardi, Tony Fletcher and Zaid Chalabi
    Citation: Environmental Health 2016 15(Suppl 1):S29
  5. The annual burden of disease caused indoor air pollution, including polluted outdoor air used to ventilate indoor spaces, is estimated to correspond to a loss of over 2 million healthy life years in the Europe...

    Authors: Arja Asikainen, Paolo Carrer, Stylianos Kephalopoulos, Eduardo de Oliveira Fernandes, Pawel Wargocki and Otto Hänninen
    Citation: Environmental Health 2016 15(Suppl 1):S35
  6. In the context of a warming climate and increasing urbanisation (with the associated urban heat island effect), interest in understanding temperature related health effects is growing. Previous reviews have ex...

    Authors: Katherine Arbuthnott, Shakoor Hajat, Clare Heaviside and Sotiris Vardoulakis
    Citation: Environmental Health 2016 15(Suppl 1):S33
  7. Urban tree planting initiatives are being actively promoted as a planning tool to enable urban areas to adapt to and mitigate against climate change, enhance urban sustainability and improve human health and w...

    Authors: Jennifer A. Salmond, Marc Tadaki, Sotiris Vardoulakis, Katherine Arbuthnott, Andrew Coutts, Matthias Demuzere, Kim N. Dirks, Clare Heaviside, Shanon Lim, Helen Macintyre, Rachel N. McInnes and Benedict W. Wheeler
    Citation: Environmental Health 2016 15(Suppl 1):S36
  8. China has the biggest population in the world, and has been experiencing the largest migration in history, and its rapid urbanization has profound and lasting impacts on local and national public health. Under...

    Authors: Xinhu Li, Jinchao Song, Tao Lin, Jane Dixon, Guoqin Zhang and Hong Ye
    Citation: Environmental Health 2016 15(Suppl 1):S32
  9. West Nile virus (WNV) is transmitted by mosquitoes in both urban as well as in rural environments and can be pathogenic in birds, horses and humans. Extrinsic factors such as temperature and land use are deter...

    Authors: Jan C. Semenza, Annelise Tran, Laura Espinosa, Bertrand Sudre, Dragoslav Domanovic and Shlomit Paz
    Citation: Environmental Health 2016 15(Suppl 1):S28
  10. Seventy-five percent of the population in Europe live in urban areas and analysing the effects of urban form on the health of the urban population is of great public health interest. Not much is known, however...

    Authors: Daniela Fecht, Lea Fortunato, David Morley, Anna L. Hansell and John Gulliver
    Citation: Environmental Health 2016 15(Suppl 1):S34
  11. As human populations become more and more urban, decision-makers at all levels face new challenges related to both the scale of service provision and the increasing complexity of cities and the networks that c...

    Authors: L. C. Rietveld, J. G. Siri, I. Chakravarty, A. M. Arsénio, R. Biswas and A. Chatterjee
    Citation: Environmental Health 2016 15(Suppl 1):S31
  12. The majority of people live in cities and urbanization is continuing worldwide. Cities have long been known to be society’s predominant engine of innovation and wealth creation, yet they are also a main source...

    Authors: Mark J. Nieuwenhuijsen
    Citation: Environmental Health 2016 15(Suppl 1):S38

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