By guest contributor Isabel Muñoz Beaulieu
The environment a person lives in has huge impacts on health outcomes. A lack of access to healthy food, affordable housing, or strong social networks can severely impact the physical and mental well-being of people within that environment. When a neighborhood or city is gentrified, minority and marginalized populations experience a sudden change to their environment by the arrival of high-income individuals. This sudden shift can cause displacement, weaken community ties and limit access to education, healthcare, and safe spaces–all critical social determinants of health.This isn’t just a local issue; it’s a global health concern.
In recent years, destinations like Chiang Mai, Thailand; Mexico City; and Nosara, Costa Rica, have seen a rapid influx of digital nomads and lifestyle expats, with the number of digital nomads skyrocketing to 139% globally since 2019. Digital nomad and expat workers—many from Higher Income Countries— are often eager to blend remote work with the perks of a lower cost of living.
But this lifestyle trend brings challenges to the very places it romanticizes. While many of these newcomers view their move as a lifestyle choice—a way to escape the rush of urban life or stretch their dollars further—locals face a different reality. Long-standing communities experience gentrification as economic disparities widen and they are forced to flee their homes, sometimes without benefiting from the prosperity digital nomads bring. Unlike many migrants and refugees fleeing from persecution or dire economic circumstances, expats and digital nomads mostly arrive by choice. For locals, however, the cost of this paradise is beginning to add up.
Being born and raised in Costa Rica, I have experienced benefits of people from HICs moving or visiting my country. The tourism industry accounts for 6,3% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product and provides economic and labor opportunities for a vast number of local residents. However, I have also experienced firsthand how the demographic shift in many communities and neighborhoods has exacerbated negative impacts resulting from the growing gentrification.
For example, around 70-80% of the population are currently unable to afford housing in the country’s coastal region of Guanacaste and 1 in 10 pre-existent residents have been forced to move to informal settlements. In addition, luxury housing developers have built illegal water wells that risk water access for the population and have polluted the water’s quality. As a result of these changes, vulnerable populations can experience higher degrees of anxiety and depression, a deterioration of their diet and even an increased risk of respiratory diseases. Additionally, high stress levels can lead to poorer mental health outcomes and behaviors conducive to binge drinking, unhealthy diet, or risky behavior. Gentrification’s impact on physical and mental health is undeniable.
In Costa Rica, a wave of anti-gentrification activism has emerged in response to the displacement and environmental strains reshaping local communities. This national movement, backed by a growing petition, calls on the government to implement protective policies, including land price regularization, community-driven planning, taxes on foreign property owners and short-term rentals, and guarantees for essential resources like water. These measures aim to safeguard Costa Ricans from the economic and environmental fallout of gentrification, which has pushed locals out of their neighborhoods and threatened natural ecosystems.
As gentrification transforms communities like Guanacaste and others across the globe, it is increasingly becoming a global health concern. If it isn’t prioritized on the global health agenda, we risk stalling progress in equitable health access and overlooking the well-being of vulnerable communities in many regions around the globe. Yet, the issue remains “gravely understudied,” and gentrification is rarely viewed as a global and public health issue—a gap that should worry policymakers and global health experts alike.
The lack of engagement from the global and public health field in addressing gentrification highlights an urgent need for more robust, policy-driven research. Specifically, stronger evidence is needed to understand both the exposures and outcomes of gentrification and to develop a clear framework connecting these factors to health policy. In addition, global health research must prioritize the social determinants of health, with an emphasis on advancing health equity—something gentrification increasingly undermines. Global and Public health officials must also be held accountable for the worsening health inequities that arise when governments fail to protect the well-being of local populations. The onus is on policymakers to protect marginalized populations against gentrification’s contribution to negative health outcomes.
Recognizing gentrification as a global health issue is essential in the quest towards reducing health disparities. Addressing it effectively requires interdisciplinary approaches that bridge policy, research, and community action. In figure 1 some public health policy ideas are proposed to inspire future and ongoing reflection on the critical policy avenues to mitigate potential harm from gentrification.
Figure 1. Policy ideas to address negative health outcomes from gentrification
About the author:
Isabel Muñoz Beaulieu is a PhD student at McGill University. Her work and research on humanitarian and global health ethics builds upon collaborations with the Center for Disaster Preparedness in the Philippines and the Canadian Red Cross. Isabel has gained field experience working in the humanitarian and development field with the United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees in Guatemala and The Hunger Project. She also supports several projects to advance equity in health at Women’s College Hospital and as a research assistant for the O’Neill-Lancet Commission on Racism, Structural Discrimination and Global Health. She can be found on LinkedIn.
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The post We Need to Consider Gentrification a Global Health Issue appeared first on Speaking of Medicine and Health.
