Project 461041

Cities play an increasingly decisive role in building a healthier and more equitable society. Through policies, programs, and built environment interventions, they have the potential to address major challenges. Yet, transformative change requires stronger collaborations between urban decision-makers, scientific experts, and local communities. Scientific expertise (and knowledge learned from experience) is often underused when cities decide on policies and urban interventions, including those aiming to reduce inequities. The complex nature of urban equity planning projects, the amount, speed and diversity of data on behaviour and environments, and the need for collaborative processes ask for new toolsets to facilitate the linkages between academics, communities, and decision makers. This proposal aims to better understand the contexts and tools needed to improve the use of science for informing urban decision-making for population health and equity. Specifically, we will Document ways to strengthen the science-policy interface to tackle urban health equity, through knowledge synthesis; Identify existing practical solutions and tools that facilitate the use of science in urban equity policy-making, through an environmental scan and key informant interviews; Collaboratively define a comprehensive roadmap to develop, test, and implement a toolset to accelerate the use of science in urban equity policy-making, through roadmapping workshops. Our work will result in a research brief and editorial (obj 1), a short guide on existing solutions and tools (obj 2) and a roadmap for developing a toolset supporting science to urban equity policy (obj 3). As a result of our activities, we will 1) unite a community of practice of researchers and professionals working with cities in Canada with international collaborators on science to urban equity policy, and 2) lay the foundations of a larger research initiative that will contribute to the municipal decision-making process.