Design For Health

Design for Health (DFH) was a collaborative project that served to bridge the gap between the emerging research base on community design and healthy living and the everyday realities of local government planning. The newest version of this project is the Healthy Places Design Lab.

Operating in three different phases between 2006 and 2012, DFH created innovative, practice-oriented tools to help integrate human health into urban planning and environmental design in nineteen partner communities and disseminated information about the connections between health and planning.

The Design for Health project is not currently active but this website serves as a repository of the tools, research and resources compiled as part of this project.

For information on research on health and planning, please visit Design for Health’s sister projects at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Health and Places Initiative (HAPI) at our latest initiative, the Healthy Places Design Lab.

Recent Updates A new A-Z guide of tools related to health and place. A new section on health topics that can also be accessed from the top menu. The resources section has been updated and made easier to find.

Featured Technical Resource The National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Mortality Maps are an easy-to use visualization tool for examining this important health topic. For earlier features, click here.