New APHA book explores many health challenges of megacities
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* Teddi Dineley Johnson

Around the globe, so-called “megacities” — urban centers with populations greater than 10 million — are increasing in number. Currently, 25 megacities dot the globe, but more will emerge, and with them will come unique public health challenges.

To help public health workers prepare for the health challenges created by these super-sized cities, APHA Press in July released “Megacities & Global Health.” The book’s 14 chapters take readers on a walk around the globe, introducing them to the unique set of health problems that arise when cities reach a certain size, and the global significance of those challenges to public health.

![Figure1](http://www.thenationshealth.org/http://www.thenationshealth.org/content/nathealth/41/5/5.1/F1.medium.gif)

[Figure1](http://www.thenationshealth.org/content/41/5/5.1/F1)

“The health of people in these large population centers has significance for the entire planet,” co-editors Gregory Pappas, MD, PhD, and Omar Khan, MD, MHS, FAAFP, note in the book’s preface.

According to Pappas and Khan, megacities are strategically important in the global order. The health challenges in the world’s largest cities will take on global significance, and public health has a role in sustaining global stability.

“This will be the first book to address what is emerging as a major public health challenge — conditions in megacities and their health consequences,” said Pappas, a senior deputy director at the District of Columbia Department of Health.

According to Pappas, the first megacity — New York City — passed the 10 million mark in 1950, and most of the megacities have reached that status only in the past 20 years.

“The full implication of these changes has not yet been appreciated,” Pappas told *The Nation’s Health*. “Half the world now lives in urban areas, and megacities are the leading edge to this change.”

In exploring the health challenges of megacities, the book draws on the expertise of more than a dozen contributing authors addressing a range of global public health disciplines. Topics covered include poverty in megacities, primary care issues that arise in megacities, the increasing importance of infectious diseases in megacity settings, issues of overcrowding, megacities’ high risk for disasters and the environmental hazards of megacities. Megacities are literally a growing phenomenon, Khan told *The Nation’s Health*.

“More and more cities in the world are going to become megacities, and megacities in and of themselves are extremely important, because they are traditionally centers of commerce, centers of industry,” Khan said. “We have adapted lessons of general urban health to all cities, but really, the time has come to discuss megacites as unique entities in many cases, and see how we can share lessons from across different megacities.”

A unique feature of the book is that each individual chapter can stand alone as a case study.

“We don’t want this just to be an academic tome that sits on a bookshelf,” Khan said. “Whether it’s Karachi in Pakistan or Rio De Janeiro in Brazil or London in the United Kingdom or Dhaka in Bangladesh, they all take a case study approach, which I think is very useful for the reader who simply wants to get a general overview, or for its use as a teaching tool in courses on urban health or global public health.”

The book is intended to appeal to a broad audience, including graduate and undergraduate-level students and teachers of global public health, urban health and international urban health.

For more information or to order a copy, visit [www.aphabookstore.org](http://www.aphabookstore.org) or email apha{at}pbd.com.

*   Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association