Stanford Health 4 All (H4A) Seminar Series

H4A Seminar: Planning and Public Health: How to Build Healthy Neighborhoods

Hosted by: Ben Chrisinger, PhD, MUEP, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, SPRC. More bio details here.

Date & Time: Thursday, August 11, 2016 (Half-Day Seminar): 9am-1:15pm (with breaks for coffee/snacks)

Schedule: Half-day seminar runs from 9am-1:15pm and includes a morning break from 11-11:15am. The seminar presenter may need to change the break times, if needed.

Location: Munzer Auditorium, Beckman Center, 279 Campus Drive b062, Stanford, CA 94305

H4A seminar agenda: In this seminar, participants will learn about the relationship between the built environment and health through multiple lenses:

Historical Context: Get overview of public health and city planning history, which dates back to early days of urban sanitary reform and the need to prevent communicable disease, and eventually reunites in efforts to address high rates of noncommunicable disease. Additionally, this seminar will cover historical (i.e., miasma theory) and more current theories (i.e., germ theory, socio-ecological models) on the relationship between the built environment and public health.

Neighborhoods and Health: Identify features of the built environment (e.g., patterns of development, parks, public works projects, housing, transportation systems) and their subsequent influences on health outcomes (e.g., physical activity, nutrition, obesity, cardiovascular risk, mental health, sleep, pedestrian deaths).

Measures: Employ methods and tools (i.e., geographic information systems) to measure both the built environment and health impacts of the built environment; Consider strengths and weaknesses to applying different built environment measures to different health outcomes; Conduct brief built environment survey of Stanford Medical campus.

Disparities in Health & Place: Critically consider and measure environmental justice in the built environment, especially in terms of how neighborhood disparities may contribute to health disparities, but within a larger ecosystem that includes political (i.e., housing rules) and social (i.e., racism and discrimination) features.

Lessons from Practice: Learn how practitioners have merged the fields of community development and public health in specific projects, including the risks and challenges to this approach; explore what students can do to advocate for healthy, equitable neighborhoods where they live now and in the future.

What will you learn: Overall, this seminar will introduce participants to the many intersections between urban planning and public health theory, research, and practice, and critically consider challenges that exist in unifying these fields in the U.S. and elsewhere.  Specifically, participants will learn:

• How early city planning and public health grew together to shape urban forms for the health and wellness of the public
• How to identify features of the built environment that are believed to influence human health, and describe the causal pathways that connect them
• How to select among a variety of built environment and health measures to best understand hypothesized relationships
• How neighborhood disparities in health and built environment came to exist - including historical legacies of development, redlining, public housing, racism - and how they persist over time
• How Bay Area practitioners in urban planning, public health, and other fields are employing these concepts in real-world projects and programs.

Who should attend: This course is designed for people who are curious to explore:

• Why someone's ZIP code can be a better predictor of health than their genetic code?
• What happens to obesity rates in a food desert once a new supermarket is developed?
• How can we plan, design, and build neighborhoods that promote health?

Seminar material applies the most current empirical evidence and is geared toward:

• College students
• Practitioners in urban planning or public health interested in new perspectives and examples
• Researchers interested in drawing connections between the built environment and human health
• Interested community members.

Cost: Half-Day Seminar Rates:

• Stanford STAP eligible.
  
• Early Bird Rate = $250 USD (through July 30)
• Scholarship Rate = $250 USD (includes students, trainees, H4A alumni, Stanford employees (STAP eligible), SHPN members, URMs, government agencies, and non-profit community partners)
  
• Regular Rate = $375 USD
  

Guest speaker details to follow.

How to register: Please visit our Registration Page (note: you will be directed to another web platform for registration).