Jason Corburn
Chair, SDI Kenya Board of Directors
Dr. Jason Corburn is Professor in the School of Public Health and Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the Director Berkeley’s Center for Global Healthy Cites and former Director of the Institute of Urban & Regional Development and Program in Global Metropolitan Studies. He is faculty Director of Berkeley’s joint Master in City Planning (MCP) and Master in Public Health (MPH) degree program. He is the author of five award winning books, including Cities for Life (Island Press: 2021), Slum Health (UC Press, 2016), Healthy City Planning (Routledge, 2013), Toward the Healthy City (MIT Press, 2009) & Street Science (MIT Press, 2005).
Prof. Corburn is a global leader in research and action linking urban and environmental planning, community health equity, citizen science and public safety. His work focuses on community-engaged participatory action research, formative evaluation and spatial and social epidemiology. He currently leads a project in the San Francisco Bay Area that includes residents, community groups and local government focused on healthy urban governance, climate justice and addressing toxic stress, called the Richmond Health Equity Project. Prof. Corburn also leads a multi-city evaluation of the Advance Peace gun violence reduction project, which uses street outreach workers to interrupt gun conflicts and promotes healing for traumatized youth at the center of urban gun violence. He is the principal investigator of a study exploring ways to avoid ‘green gentrification,’ or how urban improvement projects can prevent displacement and promote equity in low-income neighborhoods. Prof. Corburn’s international projects include community-driven work focused on housing and climate justice in informal settlements (Nairobi, Kenya), women’s access safe water and sanitation (Mumbai, India) and how urban policies with community residents can help reduce gun violence, promote healing and improve well-being for all (Medellín, Colombia).
Professor Corburn has advised the World Health Organization, World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and over thirty cities and national governments on practices and policies focused on urban health equity. He has received numerous awards for his research, practice and teaching, including the UC Chancellor’s Public Service Award, the United Nations Association Global Citizenship Award, the Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Investigator Award, and the UC Berkeley, School of Public Health Teaching Excellence Award. He was named one of the world’s “Key 40 Thinkers on Cities” by Routledge in 2017. His work has been funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, US EPA, California Air Resources Board, the California Endowment, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Arnold Ventures, USAID, the WHO, World Bank and the Rockefeller Foundation, among others. Professor Corburn received his BA from Brandeis University and a MCP and PhD from MIT. Read more at www.jasoncorburn.com.