Gase, Lauren N.; Defosset, Amelia R.; Gakh, Maxim; Harris, Celia; Weisman, Susan R.; Dannenberg, Andrew L. (2017). Review of Education-Focused Health Impact Assessments Conducted in the United States. Journal Of School Health, 87(12), 911 – 922.
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Abstract
BACKGROUNDHealth impact assessment (HIA) provides a structured process for examining the potential health impacts of proposed policies, plans, programs, and projects. This study systematically reviewed HIAs conducted in the United States on prekindergarten, primary, and secondary education-focused decisions. METHODSRelevant HIA reports were identified from web sources in late 2015. Key data elements were abstracted from each report. Four case studies were selected to highlight diversity of topics, methods, and impacts of the assessment process. RESULTSTwenty HIAs completed in 2003-2015 from 8 states on issues related to prekindergarten through secondary education were identified. The types of decisions examined included school structure and funding, transportation to and from school, physical modifications to school facilities, in-school physical activity and nutrition, and school discipline and climate. Assessments employed a range of methods to characterize the nature, magnitude, and severity of potential health impacts. Assessments fostered stakeholder engagement and provided health-promoting recommendations, some of which were subsequently incorporated into school policies. CONCLUSIONSHealth impact assessment is a promising tool that education, health, and other stakeholders can use to maximize the health and well-being of students, families, and communities.
Keywords
Decision Making; Elementary Schools; High Schools; Medical Policy; Medline; Nutrition; Online Information Services; Research Funding; Student Health; Systematic Reviews (medical Research); Search Engines; Physical Activity; Health Impact Assessment; United States; Collaboration; Policy; Public Health; Academic-achievement; Programs
McAndrews, Carolyn; Pollack, Keshia M.; Berrigan, David; Dannenberg, Andrew L.; Christopher, Ed J. (2017). Understanding and Improving Arterial Roads to Support Public Health and Transportation Goals. American Journal Of Public Health, 107(8), 1278 – 1282.
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Abstract
Arterials are types of roads designed to carry high volumes of motorized traffic. They are an integral part of transportation systems worldwide and exposure to them is ubiquitous, especially in urban areas. Arterials provide access to diverse commercial and cultural resources, which can positively influence community health by supporting social cohesion as well as economic and cultural opportunities. They can negatively influence health via safety issues, noise, air pollution, and lack of economic development. The aims of public health and transportation partially overlap; efforts to improve arterials can meet goals of both professions. Two trends in arterial design show promise. First, transportation professionals increasingly define the performance of arterials via metrics accounting for pedestrians, cyclists, transit riders, and nearby residents in addition to motor vehicle users. Second, applying traffic engineering and design can generate safety, air quality, and livability benefits, but we need evidence to support these interventions. We describe the importance of arterials (including exposures, health behaviors, effects on equity, and resulting health outcomes) and make the case For public health collaborations with the transportation sector.
Keywords
Arterial Roads; Public Health -- United States; Public Health -- Social Aspects; Road Construction; Transportation & Society; Health; Air Pollution; Social Cohesion; Influence; Physiological Effects Of Noise; Interprofessional Relations; Metropolitan Areas; Motor Vehicles; Public Health; Transportation; Low-birth-weight; Air-pollution; Land-use; Policy
In Making Healthy Places, Second Edition: Designing and Building for Well-Being, Equity, and Sustainability, planning and public health experts, Andy L. Dannenberg, Affiliate Professor of Urban Design & Planning, along with co-authors Nisha D. Botchwey and Howard Frumkin bring together scholars and practitioners from across the globe in fields ranging from public health, planning, and urban design, to sustainability, social work, and public policy. This updated and expanded edition explains how to design and build places that are beneficial to the…
The Urban Design & Planning Interdisciplinary Ph.D. at the University of Washington is one of 39 Ph.D. programs in urban and regional planning in North America, and one of the oldest, founded in 1967.
This program brings together faculty from disciplines ranging from Architecture to Sociology to focus on the interdisciplinary study of urban problems and interventions. Covering scales from neighborhoods to metropolitan areas, the program addresses interrelationships between the physical environment, the built environment, and the social, economic, and political institutions and processes that shape urban areas. The breadth of this program permits students to pursue doctoral studies in the various aspects of urban design and planning as well as in a number of related social science, natural resource, and engineering areas.
The Program seeks to prepare scholars who can advance the state of research, practice, and education related to the built environment and its relationship to society and nature in metropolitan regions throughout the world. The program provides a strong interdisciplinary educational experience that draws on the resources of the entire University, and on the laboratory provided by the Seattle metropolitan region and the Pacific Northwest. The program emphasizes the educational values of interdisciplinarity, intellectual leadership and integrity, and the social values of equity, democracy and sustainability. It seeks to promote deeper understanding of the ways in which public decisions shape and are shaped by the urban physical, social, economic, and natural environment. The program envisions its graduates becoming leaders in the international community of researchers, practitioners and educators who focus on improving the quality of life and environment in metropolitan regions.
The Northwest Center’s mission is to enhance the livability of communities in the Pacific Northwest through applied research and outreach in the areas of land use planning, policy, and design; healthy communities; food security; and public participation and democracy.
The Center is a research and policy center focused on issues of environmental and economic sustainability, quality of life, and responsible governance using Washington as a model. Recognizing that the term “livability” has many different definitions and interpretations, the Center’s programs are focused on how the fields of urban planning and design, landscape architecture, and architecture work within this broader context to address livability factors.
The Center operates from the belief that the university should, in cooperation with state agencies, local governments, and community leaders, seek to improve existing social and environmental conditions through research and innovative policy development. It advocates development strategies that focus on smart and efficient land use, strong communities, high-wage, low waste jobs and economic development and public participation and accountability in government.
Andy Dannenberg holds joint appointments in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences and in the Department of Urban Design and Planning where he teaches courses on healthy community design and on health impact assessment. He has a particular interest in the use of health impact assessments as tools to inform community planners about the health consequences of their decisions. For the past decade, Dannenberg’s research and teaching have focused on examining the health aspects of community design, including land use, transportation, urban planning, and other issues related to the built environment.
Before coming to Seattle, Dannenberg served as Team Leader of the Healthy Community Design Initiative in the National Center for Environmental Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta. He has served as Director of CDC’s Division of Applied Public Health Training, as Preventive Medicine Residency Director and as an injury prevention epidemiologist on the faculty at the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health in Baltimore, and as a cardiovascular epidemiologist at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.
Dannenberg completed a residency in family practice at the Medical University of South Carolina and was board certified in Family Practice (1982-1989). He is board certified in Preventive Medicine (1986-present).