Helen Cole

Senior Researcher

Helen Cole, DrPH, is Professor Lector (Serra Húnter Program) in the Department of Pediatrics, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Preventive Medicine and Public Health of the Faculty of Medicine at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) and Senior Researcher at ICTA-UAB. She is co-scientific coordinator/principal investigator of GreenME, a Horizon Europe consortium research project on scaling up green care across Europe. She holds a Doctorate in Public Health from the City University of New York Graduate Center specialized in community, society and health and an MPH in Health Behavior and Health Education from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 2016, she joined BCNUEJ as a postdoctoral researcher on the GREENLULUs project studying the relationship between green gentrification and health (equity). From was formerly a Distinguished Investigator (Banco Santander-UAB TALENT Fellowship, 2022-2025) and Juan de la Cierva Incorporación fellow at ICTA-UAB (2020-2022). In 2023, she served as one of three commissioners of the Barcelona City and Science Bienal, bringing science to the citizens of Barcelona.

She specializes in urban health, health equity and community health. Drawing from the fields of sociology, critical geography, and urban planning, her work challenges traditional public health perspectives by questioning and evaluating the long-term social justice impacts of structural urban interventions (e.g., the potential for green/environmental gentrification resulting from urban greening). Her current work explores whether, and how, healthier cities may also be made equitable, placing urban health interventions in the context of the broader urban social and political environments.

Research lines: Urban Environments, Health, and Equity

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