January 24, 2017
An interdisciplinary and international team of Drexel-led researchers has secured a $12 million grant that will allow it to study the effects of urbanization on Latin American cities with a goal of finding and bringing back solutions that can be implemented worldwide.
The team is being led by Dr. Ana Diez Roux, Ph.D., dean of Drexel’s Dornsife School of Public Health and co-director of Drexel’s Urban Health Collaborative. Roux will be joined by collaborators at 11 Latin American and three U.S. academic institutions, according to a statement from Drexel.
With the use of the grant money from the Wellcome Trust medical research charity, the team will immerse itself in hundreds of Latin American and Caribbean cities, where they will examine the impact of urbanization and urban policies on the people and environment. The goal is to learn how to plan and manage cities around the globe in ways that positively affect public health and the environment.
According to Drexel's communications department, Latin America was selected as an ideal place for this research because it's one of the most urbanized places in the world: 80 percent of its population lives in cities.
