222326 Promoting healthy living through the Preliminary Land Use Service (PLUS): A public-private collaboration to ensure opportunities for healthy and active living through land use

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Patricia Miller, MPP , Policy, Evaluation, and Research Dept, Nemours Health and Prevention Services, Newark, DE
Marina Kaplan, PhD , Policy, Evaluation, and Research Dept, Nemours Health & Prevention Services, Newark, DE
Gregory Benjamin, MPH , Policy, Evaluation, and Research Dept, Nemours Health & Prevention Services, Newark, DE
To prevent the continued development of obesogenic environments in Delaware, a non-profit children's health system collaborated with the state Division of Public Health (DPH) to ensure the inclusion of built environment recommendations supporting healthy and active lifestyles at the start of the land development process in Delaware.

The primary goal of the collaboration was to ensure that developers and planners received specific and actionable “healthy places” recommendations in response to land use applications submitted through the Preliminary Land Use Service (PLUS) process. PLUS is the state-level review process for all major land development proposals, whereby the state provides recommendations that applicants are required to respond to.

Two studies evaluated the effectiveness of this collaboration:

• Study 1: Document analysis of recommendations to applicants and applicant responses pre- and post-collaboration • Study 2: Key informant interviews assessing stakeholder perceptions of the collaboration.

Results suggest an increase in the number of “healthy places” recommendations sent to developers post-collaboration: No active recreation or healthy food access recommendations pre-collaboration, but post-collaboration 59% of letters to developers included active recreation recommendations and 50% included healthy eating recommendations. Pre-collaboration only 35% of letters to developers included active transportation recommendations, compared to 77% post-collaboration. Most (74%) developers stated they would amend their plans to incorporate recommendations.

Interview results suggest the collaboration changed how planners, developers and engineers understand the role of health in planning and motivated them to more proactively incorporate opportunities for active recreation, active transportation and access to healthy foods in their plans.

Learning Areas:
Environmental health sciences

Learning Objectives:
1. Develop and implement a collaborative approach to ensure the inclusion of built environment recommendations supporting active healthy living are incorporated at the start of the land development process 2. Evaluate the effectiveness of public-private collaboration to include built environment recommendations into the land development process.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am qualified to be an abstract author as I lead the built environment initiative at Nemours.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

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