Urbanisation and health during the first 2000 days of life: Building a foundation for health in Sydney’s urban environment

The concept of ‘child-friendly cities’, predominantly focused on those aged 5 through 12, has been used to guide the development of a coherent research and policy framework into how everyday urban environments sets a foundation for health in later life. This approach calls for seeing urban environments through the lives of children and their parents and carers. Despite the emergence of the child-friendly cities concept, there remains a relatively incoherent and nascent body of research and policy on how everyday urban environments provide a foundation for health during the first 2000 days of life, even though the period from conception to age five is a critical period influencing lifelong health (NSW Health, 2019).

This project brings together three SPHERE Clinical Themes – Healthy Populations and Environments, the Maternal and Women’s Health Clinical Theme and the Early Life Determinants of Health (ELDoH) Theme – in partnership with LHDs. The aim is to systematically map existing evidence of how everyday urban environments provide a foundation for health during the first 2000 days of life. With supporting evidence we then aim to scope the parameters of an interactive data tool to provide a platform to drive research, policy and practice that pays greater attention to how urban environments, both natural and built, support the first 2000 days of life and potentially transform the long-term health of Sydney’s population.

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