WHY OUR CITIES NEED A DOCTOR LIKE TOLU ONI

A bold portrait of Dr Tolu Oni reveals why cities need health-centred redesign now.

- SANDHYA MENDONCA

L to R - Owen Gaffney, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Tolullah Oni, James Robinson Dr Oni, speaking at the Nobel Prize Dialogue in Mumbai

Dr Tolullah (Tolu) Oni treats cities as her patient. Herlinde Koelbl, the renowned German photographer who created Fascination of Science, a photo art project featuring 60 internationally renowned scientists, including Nobel Prize winners and supported by Siemens, captured something essential about Dr Oni’s journey. Talking about why Oni studied science, Koelbl noted that as a doctor, Oni felt she could help only one person or a few, but she wanted to look at the bigger picture and turned to urban health.

Born in Lagos, Dr Oni is a pan-African British public health physician and urban epidemiologist. She’s a Clinical Professor of Global Public Health and Sustainable Development at the University of Cambridge and Founder & CEO of UrbanBetter. In another interview, she described herself as having ‘a combination of sheer stubbornness, ambition, and drive, and not accepting anything other than what she wants to get done.”

That drive was evident in Bengaluru, where on a recent Monday morning, several people filed into the JN Tata auditorium on the verdant campus of the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru for the Nobel Prize Dialogue in partnership with Tata Trusts on the theme, “The Future We Want’. We had come prepared to be impressed by two Nobel laureates. We were duly impressed by David MacMillan (chemistry Nobel winner 2021) and James Robinson (economic sciences Nobel winner 2024).

An equally captivating speaker was Dr Tolu Oni. “I’m trained as a physician, I’m a doctor, and I'm trained to heal,” she began. “But actually, the vast majority of factors that influence our health lie outside of the healthcare sector. They lie in the environments where we live, where we work, where we play, where we connect.”