Institutionalizing health into planning tools: Comprehensive plans and zoning codes

With our recently expanded understanding of how the built environment and neighborhood characteristics impact our most challenging health issues of the time (chronic diseases, childhood obesity, racial/ethnic health disparities, etc.) city planners, public health professionals, academics, and community based organizations have been refining tools and processes to improve the conditions to support healthier behaviors and environments. Because population-wide individual behavior change is nearly impossible, integrating public health goals into municipal policy, operations, and decision making can create broader and more sustainable public health improvements. This presentation will share case studies of actual cities in California that are institutionalizing health into their land use and transportation policies by integrating health concerns and solutions into their comprehensive plans and zoning codes. This presentation will explain why comprehensive plans and zoning codes can have huge positive or negative impacts on population health. Next, we will walk participants through these model healthy planning processes while highlighting ways that the public health community was able to successfully collaborate with city policy makers to address social and environmental health determinants and disparities. Finally, we will share what we learned from these experiences including how these city planning and public health collaborative relationships can be improved in the future.