The Global and Environmental Health Lab at York University is addressing health inequalities through innovative research on resource insecurity, environmental health, and One Health initiatives.

The Global and Environmental Health Lab, situated at York University’s School of Global Health and the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research, is a collaborative research centre focused on understanding and mitigating health inequality. Founded in 2020 by Dr Godfred Boateng (Associate Professor and Tier 2 Canada Research Chair), GEHLab has set itself apart by demonstrating research excellence on the world’s most pressing global health challenges. Socioeconomic inequality continues to influence people’s vulnerabilities to health issues globally, as evidenced by recent pandemics and the disparities in various countries’ ability to mitigate them. Moreover, the explosion of increased data access in the last decade means that global health practitioners and institutions need accurate, modern tools to analyse and operationalise the data available to them. GEHLab’s research is at the forefront of advancing mixed-methods approaches to the measurement and analysis of critical issues at the nexus of global and environmental health. Its work seeks to reduce health inequities and inform evidence-based, context-specific interventions that promote health and wellbeing, particularly in resource-poor settings.

Thematically, GEHLab focuses on resource insecurity and sustainable livelihoods; health effects of environmental pollution and climate change; scale development and validation; and One Health. With resource insecurity, the lab has collaborated with partners in five African countries and counting (including Nigeria, Kenya, Malawi, and Ghana) to measure how the intersection of poor access to food, water, housing, and energy influences health outcomes among people living with HIV, residents of informal settlements, and mothers and infants. This work led to the development of the first multilevel, multidimensional scale for housing insecurity in informal settlements, drawing on Dr Godfred Boateng’s expertise in psychometrics and scale development. Supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) through the Canada Research Chairs Programme, the lab has cultivated strategic partnerships with community organisations across Zimbabwe, South Africa, Zambia, Uganda, Tanzania, Cameroon, and Sierra Leone. These collaborations aim to validate the measurement scale across diverse African contexts and to develop a proxy indicator that enables low-cost detection of water insecurity in informal settlements. Concurrently, the initiative will generate the first regional measure of housing insecurity, marking a significant advancement in the capacity to assess its prevalence, distribution, and severity. The resulting tool will empower governments, policymakers, and development partners to identify vulnerabilities, monitor progress, and design responsive, equity-driven social protection and housing policies.

On climate change and health, GEHLab will play a significant role in the HEATSCAPE-Africa project, a new international collaboration involving partners from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in the UK and multiple community partners in Africa. With a $5.5m grant from the Wellcome Trust, this project will explore climate-related heat, sleep, cognition and mental health issues in Ghana and Zimbabwe. The project will help to identify key intervention points that have the potential to alleviate the long-term impacts of climate change and poor sleep, while informing the development of adaptive strategies for low-resource settings.

Additionally, the lab’s ongoing project in Colombia is focused on understanding how energy insecurity affects health outcomes among women and children in three municipalities.

Across these projects, the overarching goal is to produce rigorous, standardised and cost-effective tools for assessing and resolving various types of resource insecurity among some of the world’s most marginalised groups.

GEHLab has also ventured into the One Health space by leading the development of a new research centre at York University, dubbed the Canadian-African-Central American Network for One Health Monitoring and Evaluation. This research collaboration brings together leading experts from diverse fields, including anti-microbial resistance, anthropology, biomedicine and geography, to develop innovative tools for monitoring and evaluating one health initiatives around the world. Effectively balancing the wellbeing of people, animals, and the environment is increasingly fundamental to global health, as recent disease outbreaks have demonstrated that the health of these people is intricately linked to that of the biosphere around them. Noting that there are few extant cross-cultural frameworks for developing, monitoring and evaluating the impact of One Health projects, this new research centre will develop integrated surveillance systems that draw insights from the biomedical and social sciences. This initiative will also focus on training Master’s and PhD students in facing the world’s emerging challenges at the interface of human, animal, and environmental health.

Awards and research partners

The Global and Environmental Health Lab has worked with institutional partners in North and South America 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)
Universidad de los Andes (Colombia)

Additionally, the lab has attracted over $7m in funding from prestigious funders such as Wellcome Trust, the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI). Since the lab also focuses on creating and maintaining strong relationships with community partners towards impactful research and knowledge dissemination, it has also fostered relationships with community groups in Canada and Africa, including Gashanti Unity, Ghana Union of Canada and Pamoja CBO.

Fostering the next generation of global health research excellence

The Global and Environmental Health Lab plays a crucial role in fostering research excellence among emerging scholars at York University and with its research partners. The lab maintains a strong community of research assistants, associates, faculty and visiting scholars, many of whom actively engage in every stage of the research process and have gone on to win prestigious conference and academic awards (awards at the American Public Health Association Annual Meeting and the Consortium of Universities for Global Health, CIHR/SSHRC Undergraduate Student Research Awards and the McCall McBain Scholarship). Under Dr Boateng’s leadership, GEHLab has developed a strong system for sustaining the future of research excellence by not only focusing on health outcomes among marginalised groups but also encouraging the participation and development 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. Visit our website to learn more and to get in touch. Dr Godfred Boateng, Founder and Principal Investigator, can be reached via email.

Please note, this article will also appear in the 24th edition of our quarterly publication.