Milena Franco Silva

Milena is a doctoral student in the Public Health Sciences Program at the Brown School. She is an architect and urbanist who grew up in Curitiba, Brazil. She earned her Master’s in Urban Management and her Bachelor’s in Architecture and Urban Planning from the Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná (PUCPR), Brazil. Throughout her academic career, she realized that urban design and public health are essentially connected, which means that poor urban planning decisions can cause unequal spatial configurations and increase social and health disparities. She finds the field of Public Health fascinating, as it allows her to contribute actively to the efforts on promoting more equitable and healthier communities in urban settings in Latin America and globally through a transdisciplinary lens. Her research interests include livability, the relationship between the built environment and physical activity, and health disparities in LMICs. In her free time, she like to sing, play guitar and go out with friends.