How public health professionals can add value to predicting and evaluating the health impacts of city planning projects and policies

In the past five years, a number of jurisdictions have incorporated “health and the built environment” research findings into their intuitions and operations by adopting Comprehensive Plan Health Elements and Bicycle and Pedestrian Plans, focusing on “Smart Growth” development, coordinating Food Policy Councils, conducting Health Impact Assessments, and creating Healthy Eating and Active Living coalitions, among other obesity and asthma initiatives. These initiatives have all been very successful at educating the community groups and policy makers about the synergies between public health and urban planning, and putting policies on the books, however the actual health impact of these policies and programs has yet to be determined. Further, rigorous evaluation methods have yet to be developed. This presentation will step back to discuss how and what we should even be measuring, share case studies of existing and budding methods from a selection of actual non-academic projects, share how predictive tools can help assess the potential health impacts of various development, land use, and transportation alternatives, and what data and tools are missing from the field. City planners will readily admit that public health professionals are much stronger at quantitative evaluation, assessment, and predication. We will share how public health professionals can add value through city planning processes. At the conclusion of the presentation we will pose a number of discussion questions to think about the future direction of the field.