The Global Observatory of Healthy and Sustainable Cities (GOHSC) — a large-scale international and interdisciplinary initiative led by researchers, including Deborah Salvo of the College of Education at The University of Texas at Austin — has been honored with this year’s prestigious Nobel Sustainability Trust (NST) 2025 Sustainability Award for Outstanding Research and Development for Intelligent and Sustainable Urban Solutions.
GOHSC advances health and sustainability in urban environments through a global monitoring system that uses evidence-based spatial and policy indicators to measure progress toward healthier, more sustainable cities.
Salvo, a founding co-director, executive committee member and current lead for Global Engagement for the Observatory, along with more than 300 collaborators worldwide, was recognized for visionary leadership and innovation in advancing these sustainability measures.
Previous awardees include renowned scientists and notable global leaders such as former U.S. Senator John Kerry and Claudia Sheinbaum, the current president of Mexico.
Sustainable Cities
The Global Observatory was established by an international team, which includes Salvo, to demonstrate how comparable indicators can be used to measure progress of sustainable cities. Salvo, who served as its co-director from 2022 through 2024, contributed some of her own funds from UT Austin to support the Observatory’s website and primary dissemination products. Her graduate students and postdoctoral fellows have played active roles in related research projects.
With the United Nations projecting that 68% of the world’s population will live in urban areas by 2050, the timeliness of Salvo’s research and work is critical to helping cities build more sustainable futures.
A Q&A with Deborah Salvo
How does your research on healthy and sustainable cities relate to your leadership role as the director of COE’s Center for Research to Community Impact (CRCI)?
My work on the interplay and synergies of healthy and active living in cities with sustainable development informs my leadership and vision for CRCI, where we apply a team science approach to conduct applied research to improve not just individual health and educational outcomes, but primarily to improve the systems that facilitate or hinder optimal health and educational attainment.
This idea that entire ecosystems and environments need to be healthy
to support individual well-being lies at the heart of our work with GOHSC, which recognizes that cities promoting health also promote sustainable living.
Your project introduced a global monitoring system for healthy and sustainable cities. How does this system track and evaluate progress?
We use two main types of indicators at GOHSC: Spatial indicators and policy indicators. Spatial indicators look at entire cities or urban areas and divide them up into what we could understand as a large grid, and each small area gets assessed for things or characteristics that we know — through years of research — are supportive of both healthy and active living, and of sustainable behaviors, such as less carbon emissions from car-dependent urban mobility.
Policy indicators take a deep dive into urban planning documents and guides in cities. Beyond having the policy, we check to see if it actually aligns with health and sustainability promotion — some cities have the policy the other way around, which is truly concerning — and if the city’s policy document indicates measurable targets. If a measurable target is not included, then it’s just aspirational words on paper, with nothing to back it up and guarantee investments toward a healthy and sustainable city.
What barriers have you encountered in applying your research to practice and how have you addressed them?
As researchers, we are wired to collect and analyze data, publish it in journals that other researchers read, and then leave it at that. We hope that someone in the real world will pick up our very technical papers and change policies and programs based on them.
When we talk about changing the way we build and expand cities to ensure individuals can be healthy, and that the city in itself supports a healthy planet, we can’t really wait for someone to come across our technical reports and do something about it. So, our main challenge is knowing how to disseminate knowledge in a way that makes sense for those outside of academia.
Adopting a dissemination and implementation science approach has really helped, and working in developing this observatory which blends both my research and service portfolio has been a wonderful way to bridge that gap. Another major challenge, however, has been securing funding for bringing evidence into action. Most research funders consider this work outside of the scope of regular science.
As an associate professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Health Education at the College of Education, what role do you see physical activity play in advancing urban sustainability and community health?
It plays a huge role. When I tell folks I study physical activity and how to promote it at the community and population level, people assume I’m trying to get people to hit the gym or pick up a sport. The truth is that a large portion of the calories we burn can and should come from utilitarian activities, like walking and cycling to get to and from places.
If cities are designed in ways that make this type of everyday life physical activity safe, inclusive, enjoyable and convenient for all, then car trips — a source of sedentary time for all of us — would decline, and many more people would be meeting physical activity guidelines for health, while supporting a healthier, more sustainable planet.
