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Online Guide to Planning Healthy Neighborhoods

Overview

Online Guide to Planning Healthy Neighborhoods

Local officials can provide leadership in many ways to create healthy neighborhoods.

This guide:

  • Identifies the reasons to be concerned about the relationship between health and the built environment.
  • Offers options for transforming that concern into a vision for a healthier community.
  • Provides strategies and examples of how to translate that vision into action.
Overview

Introduction

Local officials have many reasons to be concerned about the health of their community. Healthy residents are more actively engaged in community life. A healthy work force is attractive to current and potential employers who want to invest in the community. In addition, many local agencies — particularly counties — are responsible for serving the health, welfare and public safety needs of residents. Healthier residents reduce the pressure on tight local budgets to pay for health and social services, public safety, parks and recreation programs, transportation and transit and a number of other local services and facilities.

Overview

Health and the Built Environment

Land use can influence health outcomes positively by presenting opportunities for healthy behavior or negatively by restricting access to healthy options. Key land-use characteristics that affect health include:

  • Patterns of land use within a community.
  • The design and construction of spaces and buildings within a community.
  • The transportation systems that connect people to places.
Overview

The Healthy Planning Toolkit

Cities and counties make planning and land-use decisions, both small and large, that can enhance health. This section describes a number of ways that local officials can integrate health concerns into the planning and land-use decisions they regularly make.

In addition to the tools described below, look for Ideas for Action – examples of strategies that local agencies can employ on a range of issues to promote healthy neighborhoods.

Overview

Tips for Taking Action

Some of the key challenges that local officials may face when working to improve the health of the built environment include are: assessing needs, understanding special populations, forging partnerships, identifying funding and resources and reaching and engaging the public. This section addresses each of these challenges.

Overview

Resources and Endnotes

Access a complete list of endnotes featured in the guide and a list of other organizations that can help your community integrate health and the built environment.

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