HealthBridge's Livable Cities Program, Hanoi, Vietnam

Chris Kuschel (MUP ’12) received funding for travel costs from the Community Service Fellowship Program—International Travel to work with HealthBridge’s Livable Cities Program in Hanoi, Vietnam. HealthBridge, an Ottawa-based NGO, aims to improve health, equity, and the environment in developing countries by focusing on how cities are planned, designed, built, and adapted. The primary objective of the fellowship was contributing to its Traditional Markets Initiative, an effort to preserve and maintain the many fresh food markets located throughout the city. For a variety of public health and cultural reasons, traditional markets are integral to the city; however, current policies favor replacing them with shopping centers and supermarkets. The work involved site visits of both traditional markets and redeveloped ones; meeting with officials, architects, and planners; creating maps and diagrams summarizing current and future plans; writing and editing various reports; and, synthesizing the information for HealthBridge to use in its advocacy and research work, in both Hanoi and other international locations.

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