Healthy Communities through Collaboration

Public Health and Land Use Planning

The APA and NACCHO partnership is now in its fifth year!

In 2003, a partnership between APA and the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) began to restore the bridge between land-use planning, community design, and public health practice. NACCHO is the national nonprofit organization representing local public health agencies (including city, county, metro, district, and tribal agencies). Our organizations are jointly exploring shared objectives, providing tools, and recommending options and strategies for integrating public health considerations into land-use planning.

The project aim is to promote an interdisciplinary approach to creating and maintaining healthy communities. The long-term objectives of the project include improving the performance of local planning and public health agencies by providing tools, resources, and networks to foster improved collaboration. An important part of that process is to help local public health agencies (LPHAs) and local planning agencies gain a better understanding of their respective authorities and functions, and how they can provide input and guidance to one another for healthier land-use planning.

Through the project we are seeking to raise the awareness of local public health officials so they can proactively participate in land use planning decisions; raise the awareness of local planners so they can bring a more informed health message into the planning process; and facilitate long-term partnerships between these disciplines to design healthier communities.

Upcoming Project Activities

Technical Assistance Calls on the Planning & Health Connection this Spring!
APA and NACCHO are launching a series of monthly technical assistance calls for public health officials and planners that are interested in the connection between health and community design. Planners and public health practitioners in the field will talk about strategies, tools, and techniques they have used to integrate health and planning in their communities. These calls will take place the last Thursday of the month, starting this February.

• Communicating with Your Policy Makers — Tips on Making the Pitch on Health and Community Design
  February 28, 2008
  3:30–5:00 pm. (EST)
• Opening up the Toolkit — Tools other Communities are Using to Integrate Health into the Planning Process
  March 27, 2008
  3:30–5:00 pm. (EST)
• More on Data — Bringing the Health Evidence to the Planning Table
  April 24, 2008
  3:30–5:00 pm. (EST)
• Lessons from the Field — Communities Talk about Completing Their Health Impact Assessments
  May 29, 2008
  3:30–4:30 pm. (EST)

Call in information will be the same for all calls:  
Call in number: 1-877-802-4003
Passcode: 348344#

Please R.S.V.P. to nsaeed@naccho.org a week before, if you plan on participating in this call! We receive frequent requests for technical assistance, and what a better way to learn than from your colleagues. We hope you can join us.

Upcoming Workshops

We have two more workshops planned for 2008:

Integrating Health and Planning
Full-day workshop
APA National Conference, Las Vegas
Sunday, April 27, 2008, 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.

CM | 6.50

Plan for a healthier community. This workshop offers a "how to" for integrating public health issues and public health professionals into the land use and transportation planning process. It will focus on different means and options to better integrate health into these processes (e.g. collaboration across disciplines, health impact assessments and other creative tools). There will be a multiple opportunities for you to discuss issues of concerns and hear about what other communities are doing from presenters and fellow workshop participants.

Check out the 2008 National Conference website: www.planning.org/nationalconference/

If you're a public health official, community organizer, or public official and would like to attend the conference just for the workshop – come for free! Click here for the registration form.

Health Impact Assessments for Healthy Places: A Training Workshop
Full-day workshop
Detroit, Michigan
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Brownfields 2008

CM | 6.50

This interactive workshop will combine planning tools with public health priorities for hands- on learning experience. We encourage all public Health staff, planning professionals, key community stakeholders and others interested in using health impact assessments (HIA) tools to design healthy communities to attend and learn about new development strategies. HIA is broadly, "...a practical assessment of policies, programs and projects that may affect the public's health, and which provides recommendations to maximize positive health effects and minimizing the negative health aspects of proposals, policies and projects." HIA can be used to take a proactive approach to integrating health considerations into Brownfield redevelopment decisions.

Fee: $75; Pre-registration is required. Register now at: www.regonline.com/Checkin.asp?EventId=182376

Past Activities

APA and NACCHO has used case examples, hands-on training, publications, and model practices, to demonstrate how the two fields can begin or expand the level of collaboration in their jurisdictions. A number of these products and educational opportunities have already come out and are available.

2004 National Survey
A national, web-based survey of APA members and NACCHO members was conducted in late summer 2004. APA and NACCHO collaborated with CDC project staff on the survey content and a survey research vendor, membersurvey.com, administered the survey.
The purposes of the survey were to:

• assess current practices in planning/public health collaboration
• explore barriers and opportunities for increased collaboration between planners and public health professionals
• identify communities that have successfully addressed public health issues in the context of visioning/goal setting exercises, long-range comprehensive planning, and current land-use planning (development review) and implementation (e.g., zoning, subdivision control).

Click here for a summary of the survey results.

Fact Sheets
NACCHO and APA have prepared two fact sheets for planners and public health professionals. The first is a two-part list that defines terms, or jargon, commonly used the respective fields. The fact sheet is intended to bridge the language barrier between the two professions, which is considerable, and can sometimes frustrate and limit a person's willingness to collaborate or expand their view. The fact sheet provides a basis for initial informal discussions between planners and public health officials that would occur before any formal or more institutionalized collaboration would get underway.

Click here for the jargon fact sheet

The second fact sheet, "Working with Elected Officials to Promote Healthy Land Use Planning an Community Design," will help health and planning agencies to broaden their partnerships to include other city and county officials who can work to progress the plan to create healthier communities.

Click here for the elected officials fact sheet

Planning Advisory Service Report
In 2006, APA prepared a Planning Advisory Service (PAS) report, titled Integrating Planning and Public Health: Tools and Strategies To Create Healthy Places which examines collaborations between planners and public health professionals committed to building healthy communities. It outlines the five strategic points of intervention at which planners and public health professionals can coordinate their efforts: visioning and goal setting, plans and planning, implementation tools, site design and development, and public facility siting and capital spending. Case studies illustrate the specific tools — including health impact assessments — used in such collaborations. The report also examines the role of universal design in creating healthy communities.

Background Information

While collaborative partnerships between urban planning and public health may seem novel, the fact is, urban planning as a profession emerged out of 19th century public health initiatives, including tenement housing reforms, the construction of urban water supply and sewerage systems, and the design of suburban "greenbelt" towns.

To look at current roles and responsibilities of planning and public health practice professionals today, however, it is clear that the respective missions of the two disciplines have diverged in the last century. This divergence implies, incorrectly, that planning and land-use control related actions no longer affect the public health. In fact, they still do, but through different means and with different health consequences than existed at the outset of the profession.

Today we recognize that decisions about land use, community design, and transportation planning have a direct effect on the rate of overweight and obesity, incidence of chronic diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and mental illness, and pedestrian injury and fatality. Additionally, environmental conditions such as poor air quality, deteriorated housing conditions, and ground and surface water contamination all are influenced by land-use planning and all have an effect on public health, especially disadvantaged populations, including minorities, children, and the elderly.

More Information