Professor Adenrele Awotona, director of the Center for Rebuilding Sustainable Communities after Disasters, delivered an invited keynote paper at the “International Conference on Social Sciences and Interdisciplinary Studies” in London.

Awotona’s paper, titled “Slums of Despair, Global Disasters and Public Health,” examined the complex connections among people’s vulnerabilities to disasters, the ubiquity of slums, and the resilience of their plentiful dwellers globally, and public health.

He noted, “In spite of the various actions that have been taken by national governments and multilateral aid agencies to reduce the risk of disasters and their social, economic, and environmental impacts on slums, more far-reaching work still needs to be done, urgently. This is because the growth and persistence of slums in developing countries threaten public health and the national security of the United States.” Read more.