Healthy Urban Systems

For professionals and enthusiasts in Urban Health, wanting to address urban health challenges through a multidisciplinary approach.

The MOOC is entirely in English, with possible subtitles in French and Chinese.

Many factors, such as social, environmental or psychological ones, affect the health and well-being of people living, working and visiting cities. How can transdisciplinary knowledge – medicine, biology, geography, remote sensing, architecture, planning, urban design, participatory policy-making – be developed to address the complexity of urban health? How to model urban systems with a multidisciplinary approach?

The Healthy Urban Systems MOOC is a comprehensive introduction to a multidisciplinary framework that promotes a holistic approach to urban health, in terms of observations and actions, concepts and theories, modelling tools, scenario design, and policy and governance. Helping citizens and policymakers to better cope with urban complexity will enable the deployment of urban responses that can build synergies and contribute to health, wellbeing and equity, while ensuring that the planet carrying capacity is preserved.

• Understand and assess social, ecological, and psychological factors affecting the health and well-being of people who live, work and visit cities
• Get familiar with the latest advances in urban health research, and with the most recent tools and technics enabling systemic approaches (machine learning, open and FAIR data, participatory, collaborative and action-research, etc.)
• Develop the ability to consider and model urban health as a complex system, with multi-dimensional and multi-scale eco-systemic frameworks
• Engage and accompany all stakeholders directly or indirectly linked to urban health, in the design of healthy, resilient, and sustainable cities

Accessible via Coursera, the MOOC Healthy Urban Systems is an online program that can be taken at your convenience.
It is split into 3 parts, and each part can be taken separately.

PART I: HEALTHY URBAN SYSTEMS CONCEPTS & OBSERVATIONS
Around 8 hours of online teaching + personal work

• A multidisciplinary framework for urban health systems
• Observing, measuring, and representing urban health

PART II: HEALTHY URBAN SYSTEMS THEORIES & MODELS
Around 6 hours of online teaching + personal work

• Theoretical frameworks to conceive models of urban health systems
• Tools for modeling

PART III: HEALTHY URBAN SYSTEMS DESIGN & POLICIES
Around 6 hours of online teaching + personal work

• Scenarios design
• Policies and governance

Organising entity

University of Lausanne, Switzerland

General coordination

• Prof. Céline Rozenblat, Prof. of Urban Geography and Complex Networks, Institute of Geography and Sustainability (IGD), Geosciences Faculty, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
• Jeff van de Poël, Digital Learning Expert, Centre for Teaching and Learning (CSE), University of Lausanne, Switzerland

Collaboration

To create the MOOC, the University of Lausanne collaborated with 30 international researchers, practitioners and professionals, from the North and the South, working in the following institutions:

• International Science Council program on Urban Health and Wellbeing (ISC – UHWB)
• Institute of Urban Environment (IUE), Chinese Academy of Science in Xiamen, China
• International Society for Urban Health (ISUH)
• HUE (Healthy Urban Environments) Collaboratory
• World Health Organization (WHO), Department of Environment, Climate Change and Health (HQ/ECH)

Duration

Continuous training, 12 weeks of study, 3 hours/week
The course is split into 3 parts, and each part can be taken separately

Location

This MOOC is an online course available on the Coursera platform

Admission requirements

Open to everyone, no prerequisites required 

Registration fee

On Coursera, enrolling in a MOOC and obtaining a certificate of completion requires payment (see Coursera’s pricing options and FAQ).