Sainath Banerjee, PhD

Conversations on Urban Health - Dr Yonette Thomas

Dr. Sainath Banerjee has been an ISUH Board member over the past year. Being a board member is quite exciting for him because of the scope and nature of the task. He sees his participation in ISUH enabling him to have global impact. He is currently co-leading the community solutions workgroup. This workgroup proposes to share local community solutions for urban health globally and to create opportunities for community-based actions. Dr. Banerjee started actively working in urban health back in 2002-2003 when he led a small pilot program in India with USAID assistance. His work focused on slums that were not supported by the government of India’s development agenda because they are not “listed.” He used data to show the need for including these communities in the national planning. His work inspired the government to develop a national urban health agenda. He sees ISUH in 4 areas: (1) advocacy; (2) implementation research; (3) knowledge support; and (4) is networking. Because of its position on the global level, ISUH can be an advocate for the creation of urban health agendas. ISUH should have a field presence and implementation to add to its knowledge base. For knowledge support, ISUH can provide predictor information to support landscape or future predictor of urban health for some countries. For networking ISUH can create partnerships with various institutions to address urban health issues. Dr. Banerjee wants to help ISUH figure out how to engage and amplify research being conducted by its members and provide a frame for supporting opportunities for members to develop advocacy platforms. He believes that membership engagement in ISUH can be supported through institutional level involvement, not just at the individual level. Members should see ISUH as the source of knowledge information and global initiatives on urban health. ISUH can create a bridge for issues and themes in urban health and provide regional opportunities for collaboration. Each member is an ambassador of ISUH. He thinks it will be a good idea to create regional chapters of ISUH.