National Built Environment Health Impact Assessment Model: Creation and Application
Citation:
Brookes, A., L. Frank, M. Mccullough, R. Baerg, AND M. Osur. National Built Environment Health Impact Assessment Model: Creation and Application. New Partners for Smart Growth, St. Louis, MO, February 02 - 04, 2017.
Impact/Purpose:
Urban planners will now be able to evaluate the health impacts for planned changes to the built environment. The health impact assessment plugin will plug into a variety of urban planning tools and allow planners to make comparisons between a baseline and multiple scenarios on the prevalence and cost of chronic disease within the planning area. This abstract supports SHC 1.61.
Description:
Behavioral (activity, diet, social interaction) and exposure (air pollution, traffic injury, and noise) related health impacts of land use and transportation investment decisions are becoming better understood and quantified. Research has shown relationships between density, mix, street connectivity, access to parks, shops, transit, presence of sidewalks and bikeways, and healthy food with physical activity, obesity, cardiovascular disease, type II diabetes, and some mental health outcomes. This session demonstrates successful integration of health impact assessment into multiple scenario planning tool platforms. Detailed evidence on chronic disease and related costs associated with contrasting land use and transportation investments are built into a general-purpose module that can be accessed by multiple platforms. Funders, researchers, and end users of the tool will present a detailed description of the key elements of the approach, how it has been applied, and how will evolve. A critical focus will be placed on equity and social justice inherent within the assessment of health disparities that will be featured in the session. Health impacts of community design have significant cost benefit implications. Recent research is now extending relationships between community design features and chronic disease to health care costs. This session will demonstrate the recent application of this evidence on health impacts to the newly adopted Los Angeles Regional Transportation plan and will be presented by the Southern California Association of Governments. Little work has been done to develop tools that readily apply and communicate health evidence in an understandable format applicable from the neighborhood to the regional scales.