Cities have high populations, traffic and infrastructure densities, leading to heat islands, noise, pollution, stress, and inadequate opportunities to be physically active or access healthy food. Investing in public health research is important to tackle the growing burden of non-communicable diseases and to develop cities that enhance the health of their residents.

HD₄ will convene a world-leading team of epidemiologists, clinicians, scientists, engineers, and architects to investigate how individuals move in space and time in Singapore, their corresponding exposure to risk factors that intersect with urban environments, and how this influences their behaviour.

The programme will work hand-in-hand with the SG100K cohort study to overlay information about environmental and behavioural factors on the cohort, enabling the links between these factors and health outcomes to be studied and support the ongoing analysis of the cohort beyond the time frame of the programme.

HD₄ Partners

HD₄ is a partnership between Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) the National University of Singapore (NUS), and the University of Cambridge including researchers from the MRC Epidemiology Unit. Programme co-lead is MRC Epidemiology Unit Prof Nick Wareham. HD₄ has received funding from the National Research Foundation, Singapore, and is hosted and co-led by the Cambridge Centre for Advanced Research and Education in Singapore (CARES).

For more information visit www.cares.cam.ac.uk/research/hd4-project/