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For those interested in health and aging, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is perhaps a surprising source of useful information. Their Aging Initiative has a useful web site and list serve, bot accessible at http://www.epa.gov/aging/index.htm. Topics covered include environmental health, aging and smart growth, and environmental activism for older people. It is well worth a look.

With growing interest in active transport practitioners and researchers have created a large number of tools to measure active transport behavior and environments. The following web sites provide lists or databases of such tools. If you want to measure AT, such sites can be a good place to start. Thye have been sponsored by such groups as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the National Cancer Institite, and the Federal Highway Administration:

• Active Living Research Tools and Measures: A compilation of community audit, park audit, survey, tracking, and related tools for measuring physical activity environments and behaviors.
• National Collaborative for Childhood Obesity Research:(NCCOR) Measures Registry: A database of measurement tools including many related to measuring physical activity behavior and the built environment; oriented toward research applications: http://tools.nccor.org/measures/
• Standardized Questionnaires of Walking and Bicycling Database: A database with approximately 100 tools focused on physical activity: http://appliedresearch.cancer.gov/tools/paq/
• Toole Design Group: 29 case studies of measuring walking and cycling: http://www.pedbikeinfo.org/pdf/casestudies/PBIC_Data_Collection_Case_Studies.pdf

Pedestrians in suburban Paris. Photo: Ann Forsyth

Design for Health’s photo collection on flickr has been expanding recently. Check out the photos through the tag cloud at  http://www.flickr.com/photos/designforhealth/tags/.

This is a picture of the image cloud–go to the URL above to find the actual clickable tags.

Those giving presentations mentioning HIAs are often looking for good visuals to go in the presentations. The Design for Health web site now has a list of visually interesting HIAs at  http://www.designforhealth.net/resources/hiaexamples.html#vih (compiled by Inna Kitaychik). Some have photos but many have maps, plans, graphs, and charts. 

Page Ave HIA was led by Christy Hoehner and Jodi Polzin. It is one of the visually interesting HIAs highlighted on th DFH web site.

The WHO Healthy Cities Program has been around since the mid-1980s and but is not as well known in the United States as it perhaps should be. The program is focused on “health development through a process of political commitment, institutional change, capacity-building, partnership-based planning and innovative projects” (http://www.euro.who.int/en/what-we-do/health-topics/environment-and-health/urban-health/activities/healthy-cities). Healthy city activities typically focus on fostering collaborations and partnerships to promote health with a refreshing mix of interventions—policies, programs, and plans. Activities that won Healthy Cities Awards in recent years include schools that promote urban health, injury and violence prevention activities, best practices in public toilets, and healthy urban transportation (http://www.alliance-healthycities.com/htmls/awards/index_awards.html).

It’s hard to find exactly how many cities participate but the WHO European office claims that over 1,400 European cities take part in 30 national networks. As the network is global, presumably the overall numbers are much larger. An Alliance for Healthy Cities brings some of these cities together: http://www.alliance-healthycities.com/htmls/about/index_about.html 

The WHO European office has a useful healthy cities checklist that shows the wide range of topics of interest to the program from ecosystem health and public participation to diversity and economic vitality. You can read the whole list at http://www.euro.who.int/en/what-we-do/health-topics/environment-and-health/urban-health/activities/healthy-cities/who-european-healthy-cities-network/what-is-a-healthy-city/healthy-city-checklist. 

For practitioners interested in integrating health research into planning and design, the task can be daunting. There are many articles that touch on the topic of the connection between people, health, and place but with varying levels of relevance, research quality, and cost (and many can be quite expensive to those who don’t have university library subscriptions). Into the gap have come a number of organizations creating practice-oriented research summaries.

UN Habitat produces and distributes a large number of reports, many related to health with numerous publications on water infrastructure, social inclusion, disaster management, housing issues, and climate change. Although you can buy printed reports that isn’t always necessary as many can be found for free.

Hidden Cities: Unmasking and Overcoming Health Inequities in Urban Settings (2010), produced in collaboration with the World Health Organization, provides a good overview of the history and current situation in terms of cities and health. Topics cange across the natural and build environment, social and conomic issues, food secutiy, health services, and general urban governange http://www.unhabitat.org/pmss/listItemDetails.aspx?publicationID=3049

Diagram from Hidden Cities

Collection of Municipal Solid Waste , Key issues for Decision-makers in Developing Countries (2011) grapples with an important problem in public health. Written in a very accessible style it answers practical questions about how too extend solid waste collection to a wider population. http://www.unhabitat.org/pmss/listItemDetails.aspx?publicationID=3231

A Global Assessment on Women’t Safety (2008) focuses on tools for enhancing safety including public education, adviacey, participatory approaches, and changing public spaces. It’s part of a series of reports on this topic http://www.unhabitat.org/pmss/listItemDetails.aspx?publicationID=2848