The Built Environment and Public Health

The Built Environment and Public Health

The Built Environment and Public Health explores the impact on our health of the environments we build for ourselves, and how public health and urban planning can work together to build settings that that promote healthy living. This comprehensive text covers origins and foundations of the built environment as a public health focus and its joint history with urban planning, transportation and land use, infrastructure and natural disasters, assessment tools, indoor air quality, water quality, food security, health disparities, mental health, social capital, and environmental justice. The Built Environment and Public Health explores such timely issues as:

• Basics of the built environment and evidence for its influences

• How urban planning and public health intersect

• How infrastructure improvements can address chronic diseases and conditions

• Meeting the challenges of natural disasters

• Policies to promote walking and mass transit

• Approaches to assess and improve air quality and our water supply

• Policies that improve food security and change how Americans get their food

• How the built environment can address needs of vulnerable populations

• Evidence-based design practices for hospitals and health care facilities

• Mental health, stressors, and health care environments

• Theories and programs to improve social capital of low-income communities

• How the built environment addresses issues of health equity and environmental justice

This important textbook and resource includes chapter learning objectives, summaries, questions for discussion, and listings of key terms.

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