Healthy Planning, Healthy Communities: How Partnerships Lead to Results

Transforming communities to provide access to healthy foods, safe places to walk and play and good public transportation is vital to health at a population level. California embraced an innovative approach to health promotion by prioritizing health, equity, economic development, and sustainability in the update of its General Plan Guidelines (GPG). The GPG provides guidance (e.g. statutory regulations, example policies, and case studies of best practices) for the development of county and city general plans, known outside of California as comprehensive plans. A general plan creates a 20-30 year vision for a community and establishes goals, policies, and implementation strategies for local land use decisions and are therefore an excellent venue to promote “healthy geography.”

The policy environment in California includes several initiatives to address climate change, equity, and health at the population level including efforts to work across silos through the Health in All Policies Task Force (HiAP). The convergence of these policy priorities set the stage for the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research (OPR) to explicitly provide health-related policy guidance in the GPG Update.

OPR recognized it would be vital to build strong interdisciplinary collaboration to incorporate healthy community principles into the GPG. Partnerships with the Health in All Policies Task Force (HiAP), state and local public health departments, and an extensive state-wide outreach process resulted in an updated GPG that includes a well-informed, health-promoting framework for local land use decision-making, supporting local efforts to create healthier communities.