Nisha Botchwey

A model curriculum for a course on the built environment and public health: training for an interdisciplinary workforce.

Despite growing evidence of the direct and indirect effects of the built environment on public health, planners, who shape the built environment, and public health professionals, who protect the publics health, rarely interact. Most public health professionals have little experience with urban planners, zoning boards, city councils, and others who make decisions about the built environment. Likewise, few planners understand the health implications of design, land use, or transportation decisions. One strategy for bridging this divide is the development of interdisciplinary courses in planning and public health that address the health implications of the built environment. Professional networking and Internet-based searches in 2007 led to the identification of six primarily graduate-level courses in the U.S. that address the links between the built environment and public health. Common content areas in most of the identified courses included planning and public health histories, health disparities, interdisciplinary approaches, air and water quality, physical activity, social capital, and mental health. Instructors of these courses collaborated on course content, assignments, and evaluations to develop a model curriculum that follows an active learning-centered approach to course design. The proposed model curriculum is adaptable by both planning and public health departments to promote interdisciplinary learning. Results show that students gain planning and public health perspectives through this instruction, benefiting from active-learning opportunities. Faculty implementation of the proposed interdisciplinary model curriculum will help bridge the divide between the built environment and public health and enable both planners and public health professionals to value, create, and promote healthy environments.

Health impact assessment in the United States

Part I - Context for HIA: Integrating Public Health, Planning and Policy Development.- The Purpose of HIA.- Public Health and Community Planning 101.- HIA, EIA, SIA and Other Appraisals.- Part II - Introduction to Core Concepts and Key Examples of HIA.- HIA: A Methodological Overview.- U.S. Case Studies.- International Case Studies.- Part III - Applied Learning: Conducting an HIA.- Screening.- Scoping.- Assessment.- Recommendations.- Reporting and Dissemination.- Evaluation.- Monitoring.- Engaging Stakeholders and Vulnerable Populations in HIA.- Part IV - HIA Today and Tomorrow.- HIA and Emerging Technologies.- Organizational Capacity for HIA.- A Look Forward.

The Religious Sector's Presence in Local Community Development

This article identifies the extent, service offerings, and location similarities or differences among secular community-based organizations, religious congregations, and faith-based organizations that engage in service delivery in low-income urban communities. The literature shows that religious organizations provide significant social services to communities, but little is known about how they compare to their secular counterparts within the same geographic context. Employing qualitative and quantitative approaches together with GIS applications for spatial analysis to survey data from religious and secular organizations in North Philadelphia, this article measures the influence of the religious sector in local community development. The article concludes that religious institutions, specifically congregations and faith-based organizations, have a significant community presence in their offerings, presence, and location and provide a substantial level of service to individuals in that they operate as “silent partners” within communities, providing important—although often unseen “institutional capital” to local development in urban America.

Public Health and the Green Building Industry Partnership Opportunities for Childhood Obesity Prevention

Improving the design of the built environment to promote health and well-being is an emerging priority within public health, particularly as a component f efforts to address the ongoing epidemic of childhood besity. Research suggests that environmental design at multiple spatial scales, ranging from regional land use and transportation planning, to accessibility of public transit, to building characteristics such as stair placement, and even the design of food trays in contexts such as school cafeterias, can influence dietary choices and physical activity. Moreover, because the built environment is amenable to change, the environmental design process provides a tangible mechanism for influencing health-related social norms at a population level. This advantage is critical, given growing consensus that individual-level interventions will not be sufficient to reverse the growth in the prevalence of childhood obesity.

Green Health Urban Planning and the Development of Healthy and Sustainable Neighborhoods and Schools

A growing body of evidence demonstrates that alterations in individual behaviors alone are not sufficient to change the course of the enduring public health epidemics such as childhood obesity. Instead, environmental factors that influence what, when, where, and how much people eat and drink and how physically active they are must be addressed at a population scale to promote healthy behaviors. Urban planners have a direct role to play in this work. This focus issue centers on a vision for the role urban planning can play to advance green health by paying careful attention to schools as a critical community resource, meeting place, and organizational feature.

Mother-Daughter Communication: A Protective Factor for Nonsmoking Among Rural Adolescents

&NA; Rural adolescent females are at‐risk for smoking at rates nearly equal to those of boys, and girls are at increased risk for smoking related diseases, reproductive, and pregnancy problems. The purpose of this study was to investigate protective factors related to nonsmoking in African American (AA) and Caucasian American (CA) female adolescents residing in rural tobacco‐producing counties in Virginia. This qualitative study targeted rural female adolescent nonsmokers and their parents because of the importance of promoting tobacco‐free, healthy lifestyles into adulthood. Participants were 18 adolescent female nonsmokers 16–17 years of age (6 AA and 12 CA) and 10 mothers (5 AA and 5 CA). Semi‐structured questionnaires based on a health behavior framework and communication theory guided four in‐depth group interviews of female adolescents and two group interviews of mothers. Protective factors identified by youth and parent groups were: frequent and open communication about smoking dangers and risks, mothers’ intentionality in messages about nonsmoking; repeated patterns of oversight of daughters activities and friends; mothers’ pride in their daughters; close knit family of support; and daughters explicit desire not to disappoint their parents. Directions for future research include the nature and type of female adolescents’ communication with parents and a parallel study of protective factors of tobacco‐free rural male adolescents to design parent‐child communication interventions for tobacco prevention.

Developing a model curriculum for a university course in health impact assessment in the USA

As health impact assessments (HIAs) become increasingly common in the USA, there is growing demand for instruction beyond short courses and online training. As of October 2013, there are graduate level courses that include instruction on HIA in at least 17 universities in the USA, including four courses that focus explicitly on HIA. Instructors of these four courses collaborated to develop a model curriculum for teaching HIA that draws on a framework for experiential learning and on a theoretical model of curriculum formulation. This article includes an in-depth analysis of these courses and presents a model curriculum for HIA instruction during an academic quarter or semester course in a university. This model curriculum may help faculty develop a graduate level HIA course at their institution, as well as inform public health and community design professionals interested in building capacity to conduct HIAs, and students considering taking an HIA course. International instructors could also learn from the US experience, and apply the model curriculum to their setting and educational structure.

The Built Environment and Actual Causes of Death: Promoting an Ecological Approach to Planning and Public Health

This article reviews empirical scholarship on preventable actual causes of death—namely, physical activity, food, and traffic-induced injury–related built environment interventions that lead to health improvements. A systems perspective built on the ecological health model is offered that addresses social determinants of health- and place-based contexts. In doing so, this article offers examples of upstream approaches to address the actual causes of death and ends with guidance on planning practice, research, and teaching organized around the research divisions of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning.

Training the Next Generation to Promote Healthy Places

Training a new generation of leaders in urban planning and public health to promote healthy places will require the development of interdisciplinary training strategies in order to enable effective research and practice collaboration. Next steps toward integrated training include development of a shared language across disciplines; expansion of funding support for multidisciplinary research, training, and practice, and formalization of interdisciplinary training competencies, curricula, and program structures. Core competencies necessary for all professionals engaged in promoting healthy places need to be established and linked to existing urban planning and public health training requirements. Integrated built environment and health curricula should emphasize transformative learning (learning that changes the way students think and approach problems) over simple teaching of facts. Model curricula for interdisciplinary training in the built environment and health are available and periodically updated. Academic training programs ranging from those with cross-listed courses to full dual-degree programs in urban planning and public health are becoming available.

Planning with Unauthorized Immigrant Communities: What Can Cities Do?

Planners and elected officials may not be familiar with employment or educational barriers faced by immigrants or understand cultural traditions and practices or how to handle the issue of an increase in unauthorized immigrants. We identify policy gaps, a growing body of research on planning for unauthorized immigrant communities, and some emergent best practices for immigrant incorporation. What can the city do, and how are cities limited? What models developed for planning with and for immigrant communities, adapting to immigrant needs, and managing change in cities that have not traditionally had large immigrant populations?