Reimagining our urban futures: Health-Driven Design for Cities (HD4) research programme launches in Singapore

SINGAPORE,Dec. 9, 2024/PRNewswire/ -- December sees the launch of Health-Driven Design for Cities (HD₄), a groundbreakingSingapore-based research collaboration seeking to discover how best to design urban environments that enhance the health of their residents.

HD₄is a partnership betweenNanyang Technological University,Singapore(NTU Singapore) theNational University of Singapore(NUS), and theUniversity of Cambridge. It has received funding from theNational Research Foundation,Singapore, and is hosted and co-led by theCambridge Centre for Advanced Research and Education inSingapore(CARES).

Health challenges of urbanisation

Cities around the world face increasing challenges in managing issues such as heat islands, noise and air pollution, stress, and limited access to healthy food and physical activity. These environmental factors contribute to a growing burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), such as diabetes, obesity, cancer and cardiac disease. With urban populations growing rapidly around the world, there is an urgent need to rethink how cities are designed to promote health and well-being.

ProfNick Wareham, HD₄Programme Lead at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Epidemiology Unit,University of Cambridgesaid:

"As a city with ambitious plans for improving its citizens'health, and a burgeoning research sector and rich health data,Singaporeoffers a unique setting for this work. HD₄will not only be studying the challenges of a growing city in the twenty-first century, but doing so in a city eager to implement strategies and tools to address them."

International, interdisciplinary team

The HD₄programme brings together a world-class team of epidemiologists, clinicians, scientists, engineers, and architects. They will investigate how individuals live and move inSingapore, how the urban environment shapes their exposure to health risks, and how this influences their behaviour and health.

A key element in this process is HD₄'s collaboration withSingapore'sSG100K cohort study, which is analysing the factors influencing NCDs in a representative and fully consented sample of 100,000 Singaporeans. All data that HD₄will analyse is fully de-identified and securely processed.

Professor of Cardiovascular Epidemiology (President's Chair),John Chambers, Programme Lead of the HD₄Programme and SG100K study at NTU Singapore's Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, said:

"By integrating environmental data with the health and behavioural data from SG100K, this research will deepen our understanding of how environmental and social factors shape health outcomes, and how we might change the built environment to reduce health risks and burdens." 

Interlocking research for a healthierSingapore

HD₄will undertake research in the following key areas:

• characterising the features of the environment that potentially impact health inSingapore
• understanding the links between environmental factors, individual behaviour and health outcomes
• observing the impact of environmental change on health inSingapore
• simulating the impact of potential changes on the health of Singaporeans
• working with government agencies to co-develop data-rich public health tools

HD₄co-leads DrRonita Bardhan(University of Cambridge) and DrRudi Stouffs(NUS College of Design and Engineering), said:

"This project will develop the science of connecting the environment with health at multiple scales, from how individual Singaporeans experience the city, to how planners and policymakers shape our urban futures. The techniques, technologies, tools and knowledge gained through the programme will create a comprehensive system-level view of how the environment affects population health."

HD₄will provide the basis for a data-rich public health approach, and through partnership with government agencies will ensure that findings can be translated into actionable policy recommendations that can guideSingapore'surban planning and health strategies in the years ahead.

Learning from this programme also promises to be valuable to those shaping sustainable and health-focused cities the world over. The programme also promises to enrichSingapore'sresearch ecosystem by training the next generation of researchers, equipped with both local expertise and international perspectives.

About CARES

The Cambridge Centre for Advanced Research and Education (CARES) was established in 2013 as theUniversity of Cambridge'sfirst overseas research centre, bringing together researchers fromCambridge,Nanyang Technological University, and theNational University of Singaporeas part of the CREATE (Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise) programme. The flagship programme at CARES is the Centre for Carbon Reduction in Chemical Technology (C4T) programme which focuses on decarbonisingSingapore'schemical industry and expanded in recent years to include additional themes such as digital transformation, and sectors such as the maritime industry.

A further large programme began inOctober 2020called the Centre for Lifelong Learning and Individualised Cognition (CLIC), bringing together researchers fromCambridgeand NTU to focus on the science of learning. CARES recently launched two projects on hydrogen and ammonia combustion (HYCOMBS) and the sustainable manufacturing of molecules and materials (SM₃), as part of a large Decarbonisation programme announced inJuly 2024, supported by the National Research Foundation inSingapore.

www.cares.cam.ac.uk   LinkedIn:Cambridge CARES

About CREATE (Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise)

CREATE is an international collaboratory housing research centres set up by top universities. At CREATE, researchers from diverse disciplines and backgrounds work closely together to perform cutting-edge research in strategic areas of interest, for translation into practical applications leading to positive economic and societal outcomes forSingapore. The interdisciplinary research centres at CREATE focus on four areas of interdisciplinary thematic areas of research, namely human systems, energy systems, environmental systems and urban systems.

More information on the CREATE programme can be obtained fromwww.create.edu.sg.

About the Medical Research Council (MRC) Epidemiology Unit

The MRC Epidemiology Unit is a department at theUniversity of Cambridge. It is working to improve the health of people in the UK and around the world. Obesity, type 2 diabetes and related metabolic disorders present a major and growing global public health challenge. These disorders result from a complex interplay between genetic, developmental, behavioural and environmental factors that operate throughout life. The mission of the Unit is to investigate the individual and combined effects of these factors and to develop and evaluate strategies to prevent these diseases and their consequences.

www.mrc-epid.cam.ac.uk

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/reimagining-our-urban-futures-health-driven-design-for-cities-hd4-research-programme-launches-in-singapore-302325733.html

SOURCE Cambridge Centre for Advanced Research and Education inSingapore