Dissemination Highlights
Stakeholder involvement and input were critical throughout each stage of the Urban Health Assessment, including during discussions about the dissemination of results. On November 22, 2019 a Dissemination Workshop was held at the at the Infectious Diseases Institute of Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. Thirty-six stakeholders were present for the meeting, representing the national and county government (6), Katwe II slum residents (5), non-governmental organizations (17), multilateral organizations (4), and local media (4).
The purpose of this meeting was to review the case study and literature review to determine key findings and recommendations, as well as improve pathways for dissemination. The key recommendations identified are detailed below.
For urban areas, health is about equity not equality. Therefore, our focus must be on revision and regulation of current nutrition/WASH and agriculture policies to reflect the needs of the urban poor. Involvement of the urban poor in policy development is necessary to ensure their needs are being met.
Health education and marketing are needed to improve health outcomes within urban poor communities. We need to market health as other sectors may market a product to, “touch the pulse of the people.” There is an additional need to educate parents about nutritional choices to help them feed their children the right way.
There is need to strengthen stakeholder involvment and cooperation by establishing linkages between key players, ministries and the community. Additional transparency and coordination among these actors can improve the prioritization of a community’s most pressing needs.
We must improve data collection and data sharing to increase the number of available urban poor datasets. There are significant gaps in data on WASH among children and adolescents, as well as dietary practices of adolescents. Studies and surveys should intentionally sample urban environments, conduct larger scale slum surveys, and label urban poor clusters for improved data use and to expand our evidence base.
