He has produced a number of well respected scientific papers as well as several books on the subject of city living including The Rise of the Creative Class, as well as its recent bestseller Who’s Your City?

The purpose of the award and the grants, which total 125,000 Euros, is to let ordinary people living in cities offer their own achievable ideas for improving the health and well-being of their fellow city-dwellers.

The grant will be divided between the three best ideas, and will be used to kick start new innovations that may change the lives of many thousands of people in simple but effective ways.

Most people like the city that they live in, but see day-to-day negatives that perhaps could easily be remedied with a little creative thought and some financial backing. Philips Livable Cities Award and Professor Florida believe that ordinary people may have the best views and feel for the place where they live in, and are probably in the best position to come up with simple ideas that may lead to big changes.

Watch the following video to find out more.

If you would like to find out more about how you could get involved in the Philips Livable Cities Award click here.

No related posts.

“I get bitten loads of times at night. I get sick five times a year, I think. I do not have a mosquito net. My brother does, but I don’t.”

Many families like Nanawewje’s do not have enough mosquito nets. Their extreme poverty forces them to prioritise who will get to sleep under the net or even who gets malaria treatment if they become sick.

As World Malaria Day (26^th April) approaches, it is shocking to think that a preventable and curable disease like malaria still kills nearly 850,000 people each year – mostly children even younger than Nanawewje and mostly in sub-Saharan Africa.

Yet this year marks a significant milestone in the meeting of malaria control targets among the development community and  there has been some excellent progress in the fight against the disease. It is as a result of these interventions that the number of child deaths from malaria is estimated to have dropped from 3,000 a day to 2,000, according to the latest Roll Back Malaria Partnership (RBM) report.

“If it takes us almost 15 years to reduce child deaths from malaria from a child every 30 seconds to a child every 45 seconds, we will never beat malaria,” said Sunil Mehra, Executive Director of Malaria Consortium at a recent reception to mark World Malaria Day at the United Nations in New York.

“We’re at a critical crossroads in the fight against malaria,” he added. “There has been significant support from donors in recent years, but what really needed is sustained, long-term resources for a wide range of activities to beat this disease.”

In RBM’s report it is estimated that $6 billion will be needed in 2010 for the widespread malaria control activities. At the moment, funding amounts to one third of that requirement. This annual amount will gradually lessen, however, once control measures become embedded and sustainable.

“It is crucial that donors don’t stop their support for malaria control activities, but what is really needed is over the long term is for the national governments of those countries affected by the disease to commit resources from within their health budgets.”

Mr Mehra was co-hosting a reception with RBM at the public gallery of the UN Headquarters in New York, with guests of honour Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and HRH Princess Astrid of Belgium. Some 250 guests attended the reception, which included a special viewing of the highly successful photographic exhibition Malaria: blood, sweat, and tears by award-winning photographer Adam Nadel, which was commissioned by Malaria Consortium, the world’s leading non-profit organisation dedicated to comprehensive control of malaria.  The story of Nanawewje is just one of the featured portraits of people living with malaria on a daily basis. To view the exhibition online, please visit www.malaria-bloodsweatandtears.com.

No related posts.

The relatively poor take-up of new treatments in the UK is one of the reasons listed in the report as ‘contributing to the higher death rate’. The Cancer Patient Support Group at The James Whale Fund for Kidney Cancer last week launched an online petition at No. 10 Downing Street calling for a review of the current system of NICE appraising newly licensed and approved Cancer drugs.

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/NewCancerDrugs/

The news about poor uptake of cancer drugs comes as no surprise to kidney cancer patients from the James Whale Fund for Kidney Cancer; only last week kidney cancer patients received the devastating news that NICE have issued preliminary guidance to the NHS rejecting everolimus (trade name Afinitor & manufactured by Novartis) a new and innovative cancer drug for the second line treatment of advanced kidney cancer.

This comes despite NICE admitting “……..evidence implies that this treatment is clinically effective”.

This is just one example of the dire situation facing many cancer patients in the UK today. No matter what the cancer is, the poor uptake by NICE of cancer treatments is leaving the UK lagging far behind in survival rates.

Rose Woodward & Julia Black who work together helping cancer patients who have been refused funding for cancer treatments at The James Whale Fund for Kidney Cancer stated:

“The NICE decision means many of our UK kidney cancer patients will go without effective drugs, patients cannot afford to buy these drugs themselves and will die prematurely compared to the rest of the world. That is just not acceptable.”

For more information about The James Whale Fund for Kidney Cancer visit www.jameswhalefund.org

Related posts:

1. Kidney Cancer Drug Everolimus (Afinitor) too expensive according to NICE The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) ruled...
2. Strong relationship between bowel cancer and vitamin D found Scientists have proposed that those with a high level of...
3. Mouth cancer doubles due to oral sex In the last two decades mouth cancer has risen by...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.