Health equity at the intersection of urban planning and public health: An analysis of programmatic, discursive, legislative, and structural actions

The urban planning and public health fields both describe complex relationships between the neighborhood environment and health. A Health in All Policies framework suggests that health determinants be considered in every policy. To explore whether this “health equity lens” is used in the U.S., we conducted a policy scoping of the 15 largest cities - and of major U.S. urban planning, public health and health impact assessment organizations - to determine if they considered both urban planning and public health in their policy efforts. No such policy database currently exists. We used Google's search engine to uncover any such policy “actions” that explicitly incorporate both perspectives. We categorized these policy and practice “actions” by mode: programmatic, discursive, legislative and structural as well as by issue. Our Google results returned 148 hits across 15 cities. Upon review we found many actions that integrated public health and urban planning. Specifically, we found multiple programmatic [79] and discursive actions [39] occurring primarily in Atlanta, New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, and Seattle. The planning and public health issues most-often addressed by cities were at the intersection of zoning and raising the public health profile [11], community development and general health [9], and transportation design/infrastructure and general health [8]. We will discuss our city and organization policy scoping results as well as next steps for research and policy. Finally, we will encourage attendees to tell us about any relevant policy “actions” happening in their cities.