Friday, September 18, 2015
Over the past decade, the "Healthy Communities" movement has steadily gained momentum within the urban planning profession and won some significant policy victories. Since 2006, the County's Department of Public Health has had a dedicated unit to promote the integration of community health considerations into the planning and design of the built environment. In March 2015, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously adopted a new "Health and Wellness" Element as part of the City's General Plan. Developers have also come onboard, incorporating fitness-oriented amenities such as walking paths into master-planned communities and generally marketing active lifestyles to prospective buyers.
The Healthy Communities movement may seem a logical and long-overdue response to LA's auto-centric neighborhoods and rising obesity rates, but it is not without its (healthy) skeptics. Do people who live in walkable communities really get more physical exercise on a daily basis than those who do not? How do we reliably measure the impacts of planning interventions when so many factors influence individual health? Is it possible to engineer better health outcomes through the design of the built environment? Join us for a spirited discussion of these issues and what the Healthy Communities movement means for Southern California.
PANELISTS
Jean Armbruster, Director, Los Angeles County Department of Public Health PLACE Program Clare De Briere, Chief Operating Officer, The Ratkovich Company
Sahra Sulaiman, Communities Editor, Streetsblog Los Angeles
MODERATOR
Fred Zimmerman, Professor, Department of Health Policy and Management, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health
Over the past decade, the "Healthy Communities" movement has steadily gained momentum within the urban planning profession and won some significant policy victories. Since 2006, the County's Department of Public Health has had a dedicated unit to promote the integration of community health considerations into the planning and design of the built environment. In March 2015, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously adopted a new "Health and Wellness" Element as part of the City's General Plan. Developers have also come onboard, incorporating fitness-oriented amenities such as walking paths into master-planned communities and generally marketing active lifestyles to prospective buyers.
The Healthy Communities movement may seem a logical and long-overdue response to LA's auto-centric neighborhoods and rising obesity rates, but it is not without its (healthy) skeptics. Do people who live in walkable communities really get more physical exercise on a daily basis than those who do not? How do we reliably measure the impacts of planning interventions when so many factors influence individual health? Is it possible to engineer better health outcomes through the design of the built environment? Join us for a spirited discussion of these issues and what the Healthy Communities movement means for Southern California.
PANELISTS
Jean Armbruster, Director, Los Angeles County Department of Public Health PLACE Program Clare De Briere, Chief Operating Officer, The Ratkovich Company
Sahra Sulaiman, Communities Editor, Streetsblog Los Angeles
MODERATOR
Fred Zimmerman, Professor, Department of Health Policy and Management, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health
