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Building healthy communities, Public Health steps up to the plate
The sprawling suburban environments that many people live in are car-centric and not designed to encourage walking or cycling for everyday activities and errands.
by Kathy Dermott1
Healthy communities are becoming a higher priority today and experts in public health and land use planning are increasingly exploring the relationship between the built environment and health in a bid to make change happen.
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Walking the Talk! Melissa Jones, Megan Williams and Dr. Charles Gardner of the Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit enjoyed a self-guided walkability tour of Alliston, accompanied by a checklist to help identify what promotes and impedes physical activity in the community. In keeping with the theme of the conference, alPHa delegates were encouraged to take the walkability tour, as well as to carpool, enjoy guided group morning walks and take part in mind morning fitness breaks. |
“Where we live affects our health, because it helps to determine our level of physical activity, the quality of air we breathe, our safety and our overall sense of well-being,” said Dr. Charles Gardner, Medical Officer of Health for the Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit (SMDHU). “If we want the people living in our communities to have good health, then we must have good community planning.”
The SMDHU was the host of the Association of Local Public Health Agencies (alPHa) 2008 annual conference, “Building for Health: From Vision to Reality”, which was held in Alliston recently. The conference brought together experts and researchers in public health and land use planning to discuss how to make healthier communities in Ontario happen.
At issue, delegates heard, is that the sprawling suburban environments that many people live in are car-centric and not designed to encourage walking or cycling for everyday activities and errands.
“People know that they need to eat well; they also know that they need to make exercise a daily habit in order to reduce their risk of chronic diseases,” said Dr. Gardner. “But does their environment encourage an active, healthy and safe community, or is it actually a barrier to health? That's what we need to address.”
Neighbourhoods are removed from stores, offices, services and restaurants, making it difficult for people to shop or go to work without using their vehicle. Roads are wide and hectic, intersections and crosswalks are far apart. Shopping centres and office parks are set in the middle of big parking lots, which are risky places to walk. And in some places, sidewalks don’t exist and the road shoulders are too narrow to walk safely.
Car-dependent neighbourhoods also contribute to poor air quality, which in turn has a negative impact on health. The result of community design that supports vehicle use, and communities that do not have public transit systems or anti-idling bylaws, is more air pollution.
The effect of community design on health is seen in rising obesity rates and related incidence in chronic diseases, increased visits to physicians, emergency rooms and hospital admissions related to air pollution, and injuries as a result of collisions.
There is also a weakening sense of community and a loss of social capital as people who spend more time in vehicles have less opportunity for those happenstance networking occasions that are so important to building strong communities.
“I’m firmly convinced that this is a civil society issue,” said Jeff Lehman, a councillor with the City of Barrie who spoke at the opening reception. “It's hard to be part of a community if you are only interacting with it through a (car) window.”
Changing the car-dependent culture includes building more “complete” mixed use communities with connected streets, that are within walking distance to jobs, shops and schools; investing in good public transit; and retrofitting existing neighbourhoods by improving lighting, building sidewalks, adding benches for sitting, “greening” them with appealing landscaping, creating community focal points, and adding places where people can park and lock their bikes. Common to all approaches to building healthier communities is creating communities that are walkable.
“As walkability increases obesity decreases as does per capita vehicle use and the associated air pollution, greenhouse gases, and energy consumption,” said Dr. Lawrence Frank, School of Regional and Community Planning and Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, University of British Columbia, and the conference's keynote speaker. “As connectivity goes up, emissions go down because you’re providing a lot of small destinations that make people want to walk.”
The challenge to public health, said Councillor Lehman, is to do more than sound the alarm. “We need you to help us understand how we can build healthier communities.”
In keeping with the theme of the conference, delegates were encouraged to carpool, to take part in a local walking tour of Alliston, to join the half-hour morning walks organized each morning and to participate in mid-morning fitness breaks.
For more on building healthy communities, be sure to attend OPHA's conference this year from October 26-29 in Niagara Falls. It is jointly hosted by the Ontario Public Health Association, the Association of Local Public Health Agencies, and Niagara Region Public Health. The conference is built around the theme of “Making Healthy Communities Count,” a theme that reflects the upcoming implementation of the new Ontario Public Health Standards and the ability to plan for, assess, survey and evaluate our healthy communities.
1 Kathy Dermott is Media Co-ordinator in the Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit.
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