Scientific knowledge of the health benefits of urban green and blue spaces is not
being translated fast enough into practical and policy changes. Such changes are needed
to improve the liveability of communities in large urban areas and to address the
dual and growing challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss. A vast array
of options can facilitate better design of urban settings to enhance natural environments
and improve health. One is to increase tree coverage and green space to reduce the
higher temperatures in cities and towns compared with rural areas.
Our results showed the deleterious effects of UHIs on mortality and highlighted the
health benefits of increasing tree coverage to cool urban environments, which would
also result in more sustainable and climate-resilient cities.
Lessons learned from leveraging an existing neighbourhood-level WBE reporting dashboard
include: (1) community buy-in is key, (2) public data sharing is effective, and (3)
sub-ZIP-code (postal code) data can help to pinpoint populations at risk, track intervention
success in real time, and reveal the effect of local clinical testing capacity on
WBE s early warning capability. This successful demonstration of transitioning WBE
efforts from opioids to COVID-19 encourages an expansion of WBE to tackle newly emerging
and re-emerging threats (eg, mpox and polio).