Project Overview
Urban is a sub-awardee to JSI Research and Training Institute to research avenues for addressing health outcomes for vulnerable populations in fast-growing Asian cities, leveraging Smart City initiatives that are underway in many. Funded by USAID, the “Building Healthy Cities project will aim to refocus city policies, planning, and services with a health equity lens, while improving data-driven decision-making for Smart Cities.” The project will focus on three cities: Indore, India; Makassar, Indonesia; and Hanoi, Vietnam. The three-year project will pilot ways to engage policymakers and communities in identifying and addressing health-affecting services of significance and amendable to change with better use of technology.
Urban will conduct a political economy analysis (PEA) of each of the three cities. The purpose of these PEAs is to consider how development solutions can have effect in the context of a particular place and time. This often means considering power relationships, formal and informal decision processes, problems of corruption, violence, conflict and obstacles to collective action.
We will be considering these five main focuses:
- Intergovernmental processes for planning, budgeting and implementing health affecting services, both vertically among levels of government, and horizontally, among branches and departments of government.
- Accountability and incentives that affect performance of health-affecting services.
- Mechanisms of collective action: Strategies used by residents, others to affect policies, plans and implementation, protect rights and property.
- The ecosystem for policy-relevant information. Sources, uses and users of information on policies, services, and outcomes.
- The role of informal norms in public decision-making and citizen interactions with public sector.
Funder
USAID
Period of Performance
2017 – 2020