Session: Built Environment Institute II: Teaching the Built Environment: Health Connection

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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

4023.0: Tuesday, November 07, 2006: 8:30 AM-10:00 AM

Oral

Built Environment Institute II: Teaching the Built Environment: Health Connection

The past decade has seen an increase in interest in how the built environment influences health. In the 19th century, the connection between health and urban form was grasped when infectious diseases and industrial pollution effects were reduced through new building designs and better urban planning. Later, improvements in health and innovations in treatment and prevention shifted attention away from design and the built environment. Now, chronic diseases such as obesity and an awareness that the contemporary urban form can result in negative health consequences has again resulted in the merging of public health and the built environment. The challenge is to integrate this renewed awareness of the effects of the built environment back into public health practice. Over the past few years, courses have been developed that combine health and the built environment. These courses have fostered additional collaborations as faculty and students reconnect these disciplines. Other schools have chosen to bring individuals from the built environment into their departments to organize joint conferences, apply for non-public health, give lectures, conduct research, and propose courses. Prominent journal articles have been adapted as core readings, and the different languages and research methodologies in public health and architecture or urban planning have been shared and translated. This session addresses how the built environment can effectively be incorporated into public health teaching, research and practice. These efforts are models for people interested in training the next generation and can be reformulated to suit the needs of other institutions.

Learning Objectives: 1. List examples of university level efforts to incorporate built environment ideas, concepts, and individuals into public health courses, programs, and research. 2. Identify the barriers to developing new courses, securing funding, and inviting built environment researchers into the public health realm. 3. Describe how research and collaborations on the built environment can have immediate, positive, and lasting effects for public health 4. Encourage the translation of built environment research into public health practice.

Moderator(s):

Russell Lopez, MCRP ScD

8:30 AM

Design Solutions for Health: The Development of a New Built Environment Course at a School of Public Health