Planning urban environmental health information systems: a case study of Cape Town, South Africa

This paper describes and reflects on an initiative to develop environmental health indicators in Cape Town, South Africa. The project aimed to provide decision makers, environmental health professionals and the community with better information on the health impacts of environmental hazards. The pap er summarizes the social, environmental and health conditions in the city a nd the organization of local government services, and then describes the pa rticipatory process used by the initiative including the qualitative approa ches used to develop a situation analysis of environmental health informati on systems. Despite the use of participatory methods to involve planners an d field staff from different municipal agencies, the initiative failed to d evelop the hoped for set of indicators. The primary reasons for this were d ifficulties in creating an "institutional space" for the project; on-going local government restructuring; and poor linkages to other initiative. The paper concludes that there is a need for planners, managers and academics t o begin using a more structured approach to implementing policies and manag ing uncertainty in order to facilitate change in areas such as environmenta l health information systems. Policy instruments which can be used for. pla nning and managing change are discussed.