York University’s Institute for Global Environmental Health tackles health inequalities through innovative research on resource insecurity, environmental health and the One Health initiative.
The Institute for Global and Environmental Health, located within York University’s School of Global Health and Dardalene Institute for Global Health, is a collaborative research center focused on understanding and mitigating health inequalities. Founded in 2020 by Dr. Godfred Boateng (Associate Professor and Canadian Tier 2 Research Chair), GEHLab has differentiated itself by demonstrating research excellence on the world’s most pressing global health challenges. Socioeconomic inequalities continue to influence people’s vulnerability to health problems around the world, as evidenced by the recent pandemic and disparities in countries’ ability to mitigate it. Additionally, the explosion in data access over the past decade means that healthcare professionals and institutions around the world need accurate, up-to-date tools to analyze and operationalize available data. GEHLab research is at the forefront of advancing mixed methods approaches to measuring and analyzing critical issues at the nexus of global and environmental health. Its work aims to inform evidence-based, context-specific interventions that reduce health inequalities and promote health and well-being, particularly in resource-poor settings.
Thematically, GEHLab focuses on resource security and sustainable livelihoods. Health effects of environmental pollution and climate change. Scale development and validation. and One Health. With resources insecure, the Institute worked with partners in five African countries (including Nigeria, Kenya, Malawi, and Ghana) to measure how the intersection of poor access to food, water, housing, and energy impacts the health outcomes of people living with HIV, residents of informal settlements, mothers, and infants. This research leveraged the psychometric and scale development expertise of Dr. Godfred Boateng and led to the development of the first multilevel and multidimensional measure of housing insecurity in informal settlements. Supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) through the Canada Research Chairs Program, the laboratory has developed strategic partnerships with regional organizations in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Zambia, Uganda, Tanzania, Cameroon, and Sierra Leone. These collaborations aim to validate measurement scales across Africa’s diverse contexts and develop alternative indicators that can detect water insecurity in informal settlements at low cost. At the same time, this effort will produce the first regional measure of housing insecurity, representing a significant advance in our ability to assess its prevalence, distribution, and severity. The resulting tools will enable governments, policy makers, and development partners to identify vulnerabilities, monitor progress, and design responsive, equity-focused social protection and housing policies.
On climate change and health, GEHLab will play a key role in the HEATSCAPE-Africa project, a new international collaboration involving partners from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in the UK and several community partners in Africa. Funded by a $5.5 million grant from the Wellcome Trust, the project will investigate climate-related heat, sleep, cognitive and mental health issues in Ghana and Zimbabwe. This project will help identify key intervention points that may reduce the long-term effects of climate change and sleep deprivation, while informing the development of adaptation strategies for resource-poor environments.
Additionally, the institute’s ongoing project in Colombia is focused on understanding how energy insecurity impacts the health status of women and children in three municipalities.
The overarching goal across these projects is to create rigorous, standardized, and cost-effective tools to assess and address different types of resource insecurity in some of the world’s most marginalized groups.
GEHLab has also moved into the One Health field by leading the development of a new research center at York University called the Canada-Africa-Central America Network for One Health Monitoring and Evaluation. This research collaboration will bring together leading experts from a variety of fields, including antimicrobial resistance, anthropology, biomedicine, and geography, to develop innovative tools to monitor and evaluate One Health efforts around the world. Effectively balancing the well-being of people, animals, and the environment is increasingly fundamental to global health, as recent disease outbreaks have demonstrated that human health is intricately linked to the health of the surrounding biosphere. Noting that few cross-cultural frameworks exist for developing, monitoring and evaluating the impact of One Health projects, this new research center will develop an integrated surveillance system that draws insights from the biomedical and social sciences. The initiative will also focus on training master’s and doctoral students to face the world’s emerging challenges at the intersection of human, animal, and environmental health.
Awards and research partners
The Global and Environmental Health Lab has worked with institutional partners in the Americas and Africa, including:
Western University (Canada) University of Alberta (Canada) University of Toronto (Canada) University of Notre Dame (USA) Northwestern University (USA) Wayne State University (USA) Global One Health Academy (USA) Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (Ghana) University of Ghana University of Cape Coast (Ghana) University de los Andes (Colombia)
In addition, the lab has attracted more than $7 million in funding from notable funders including the Wellcome Trust, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), and the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI). The lab also focuses on building and maintaining strong relationships with community partners for impactful research and dissemination of knowledge, so it has also fostered relationships with community groups in Canada and Africa, including Gashanti Unity, the Canada-Ghana Coalition, and Pamoja CBO.
Cultivating the next generation of global health research excellence
The Global and Environmental Health Lab plays a key role in promoting research excellence among emerging academics at York University and its research partners. The laboratory maintains a strong community of research assistants, assistants, faculty, and visiting scholars, many of whom are actively involved in all stages of the research process and have received prestigious conference and academic awards, including awards at the American Public Health Association Annual Meeting and the Consortium of Universities for Global Health, the CIHR/SSHRC Undergraduate Student Research Award, and the McCall McBain Scholarship. Under Dr. Boateng’s leadership, GEHLab has developed a strong system to sustain the future of research excellence, not only by focusing on health outcomes for marginalized groups, but also by encouraging the participation and advancement of scholars from historically underrepresented backgrounds.
The Global and Environmental Health Lab is uniquely positioned to foster strategic collaborations with institutional and individual stakeholders to advance innovative research solutions to the world’s most pressing global health challenges. For more information, please visit our website and contact us. Founder and Principal Investigator Dr. Godfred Boateng can be contacted via email.
This article will also be published in the quarterly magazine issue 24.
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