VIRTUAL: Applying Education

Abstract

The way researchers understand and conceptualise health within urban environments has seen a significant transformation over the years. This is attributed to how researchers have approached the increasingly complex, diverse and interconnected factors, challenges and trends affecting health and wellbeing. Numerous social, environmental, biological, economic, political, and cultural aspects can affect the health and wellbeing of populations within a worldwide web of complex and interconnected urban settings on multiple levels and contexts. As a result, various conceptual and theoretical framings of health exist today influencing the way urban health researchers understand and approach health and wellbeing. This could be a confusing endeavour, especially for urban health research students, early career researchers and practitioners who need to understand how best to approach urban health with better conceptual grounding. With an ever growing number of cross-disciplinary research material in this area, the literature can easily become confusing and lacking conceptual and theoretical rigour. Here we provide a useful mapping of the different lenses researchers have utilised to conceptualise and theorise about their understandings of health, especially as these relate to urban environment. By organising the literature into five distinct conceptual lenses of health, the perspective piece provides a clear reference point that will assist the urban health research community.