Interdisciplinary health impact assessment tools to advance “healthy urban development” in San Francisco

Public health attention to the “built environment” has dramatically increased awareness about the impacts of land use, transportation, and community design on population health and well-being. Historically, however, public health has played a limited role in determining built environment policy, with significant institutional barriers to meaningful involvement and participation in planning and decision-making. The need for planning and research tools that bridge the gap between land use and transportation planning and community health is essential for the integration of health considerations in these domains.

In San Francisco, health impact assessment methods provide an opportunity to clearly articulate these connections. The San Francisco Department of Public Health has developed tools and quantitative models to understand how elements of the built environment influence health-related exposures and outcomes including air quality, noise levels, pedestrian activity, pedestrian injury, and food access in addition to a comprehensive “healthy development” assessment method.

In this session, we will provide a brief overview of these tools and how they were developed with an eye towards understanding the health implications of planning decisions. We will highlight how we have applied these tools to planning efforts, and describe our findings including implications for planning improvements and mitigations. Furthermore, we will review some strengths and limitations of these approaches to understanding and improving the health impacts of land use and transportation planning. This session will end with a short discussion of potential approaches to utilizing or adapting these tools, as well as future ideas for additional tools to address unmet needs.