Impact on Urban Health

Thank you to all our partners for your inspiring work in 2023. It's only with your support that we can realise our vision of making cities healthier places for everyone. A message from our Executive Director, Peter Babudu:

As our new government prepares for their first 100 days in office, our children's mental health programme is calling for a long-awaited strategy to tackle child poverty once and for all. 👉 Read more about our asks, and the incredible partners we work with: https://lnkd.in/epwsAP9e 👨👦👦 Supporting interventions and policy changes that loosen poverty’s grip on children and families right now – like abolishing the 2-child cap – is an impactful place to start. But without addressing the many other factors that can affect a family’s ability to pay the bills, from low-paid unstable work to unaffordable rent, these changes are sticking plasters. 💷 We need a long-term strategy to sustainably reduce the high levels of child poverty in the UK, considering a range of factors that affect children and families; this includes housing, employment, education, and childcare costs. 💬 Furthermore, any strategy produced by government should have the voice of children, young people and parents at the heart of it – listening to their experience in order to fully understand the impact of broader policy change.

Our children's mental health programme partners with trusted, community-led orgs that support families forced into the most difficult situations. ParentSkills2Go (PS2G) are exactly the sort of grassroots org that our new gov should be listening to. 🌱 Our partnership with PS2G is based on our shared understanding that children thrive when we work towards equality and justice for all communities. https://lnkd.in/eq6c-w_7 PS2G provides support, advice, training, and advocacy for parents and families in the London borough of Southwark. They work to reduce the stressors faced by so many families and young people in urban areas, from housing and financial insecurity to the trauma of escaping your country to protect your children. 🫶 They are led by Margaret Taribo, a community leader with decades of experience working with Children’s Centres and SureStart programmes. Through this work Margaret has supported families facing the deepest inequalities, particularly those who have been excluded from existing help and services. Visit their website to find out more: https://lnkd.in/e4cbvCSS

✏️ You can now register for this year’s Next Generation Schools Conference, run by our unstoppable partner Big Education. Attendees get the opportunity to learn from schools across the country who are working to develop exciting approaches to leadership, curriculum, pedagogy and assessment that prioritise the health and wellbeing of pupils and staff. 🏫 We’re excited to see some of our incredible local schools represented and to meet others working to build an education sector that is inclusive and nurturing for every child. https://lnkd.in/d_DbYVsM

Breathe London is a community air pollution sensor network made by and for Londoners. If you've used Breathe London's website - or have engaged with their work in any way - they'd love your feedback: https://lnkd.in/g9bKd_58

Last chance to apply! 🚛 Invitation to tender: We are looking for an organisation or individual to set up and manage a trade association for businesses involved in the sustainable urban freight sector. ⌛ Submission deadline: 5pm on 19th July 2024 👉 Full details here: https://lnkd.in/ehi8SBA2 Freight, the movement of goods and services, is a significant source of air pollution in cities. It contributes over a third of transport emissions and is responsible for a disproportionate share of harmful pollutants in the air we breathe, including almost 20% of nitric oxide (NOX) emissions in London. The number of vans on our streets is increasing as is freight’s proportion of total transport emissions. Our goal is to drastically reduce the number of polluting freight miles driven in Lambeth and Southwark. 💸 We have committed to seed-funding a trade association specifically focused on growing and developing the clean urban freight sector. We are looking for an organisation to set it up, develop a business model that will ensure financial independence and long-term sustainability, and to run it. Our funding is intended to subsidise the organisation’s costs until it can be financially independent and sustained through its own revenues, e.g. from membership fees. 👉 Apply here: https://lnkd.in/ehi8SBA2

Headline figures from the government's data release show that 1.6 million children are living in poverty as a result of the two-child limit to benefit payments. 📃 Read more: https://lnkd.in/emq3XPA6 The quotes in the reports are devastating. 👉 Read Child Poverty Action Group’s report in full here: https://lnkd.in/eCgnbzwd Kamna – Programme Director for our children’s mental health programme: 💬 “Over the next five years, the new government has an opportunity to improve children’s mental health by addressing chronic poverty – one of the most important causes of distress in young people’s lives. We welcome the government’s manifesto pledge of a comprehensive strategy to reduce child poverty in the UK. This strategy must address how children and their families experience poverty, including housing, employment, education, and childcare costs. To succeed, the strategy will need to review the policies that trap families in poverty, including the two-child limit and the benefit cap. Abolishing the two-child limit alone would lift 300,000 children out of poverty and reduce the depth of poverty for 800,000 more.” 🏘️ Read more: 'Creating healthier urban places: our response to the new government’s health mission' https://lnkd.in/dP7jY3mr

The climate crisis is a health crisis – but it's impact on people's health isn't felt equally. 🏙️ In urban places, the communities most at risk of the health effects of climate change contribute the least to it – and whose voices are often excluded from climate activism. 🤝 Last year, we partnered with Do it Now Now to back 17 Black and Brown-led organisations through the Climate, Health & Community Fund. These organisations are working to make sure that people from all communities are included in action against climate change. We spoke with upCYCLE LDN, Uffo Athletic and Leisure Group and Bizzie Bodies to find out about how their work connects to climate activism. Hear what they said: https://lnkd.in/eKz6D7eu Read more: https://lnkd.in/eUWeEfm9

🏗️ Construction is a major source of air pollution. While other sectors are reducing their polluting emissions, the construction sector's contribution has increased. We've been working with Arup to help businesses monitor and reduce their emissions. Check out a recording of Arup’s recent event - held on Clean Air Day - and chaired by James Bellinger: https://lnkd.in/ewEsvP4V

The new government has committed to acting on health inequalities – but our health is mostly made outside the healthcare system. To succeed, the government’s mission will need to ensure the places we live, work and play are as healthy as they can be. Crucially, the mission will need to involve not just businesses, local authorities and NGOs, but also communities: we know that solutions are most effective and equitable when they are developed with the communities that have most at stake. In our latest blog, our team share their thoughts on what’s needed over the next five years to create healthier places: https://lnkd.in/dP7jY3mr