Healthy Community Design

Joint Call to Action to Promote Healthy Communities

APHA pledges our support to the Joint Call to Action to Promote Healthy Communities (PDF) by encouraging our members to work together with built environment professionals to plan, build and support healthy communities.

These new conversation guides highlight successful cross-disciplinary collaborations across the country for healthy, equitable communities. Each guide includes conversational questions that health, design, planning professionals and more can use to kick-start community collaboration (all are downloadable PDFs):

Northwest Arkansas: Turning the wheels to build biking infrastructure and access
Phoenix: Design strategies for burning health issues
Los Angeles: Convening new partnerships, breaking out of silos
Salinas, California: A neighborhood’s plans for a vibrant transformation
Denver: A stormwater problem becomes a health equity opportunity
Colorado: Broadening the discussion about health and the built environment
Washington, D.C.: A lesson plan for health and health equity
South Bend, Indiana: Driving results for community safety and health
Winchester, Kentucky: Reimagining parks, health and an entire small town
Baltimore: An alley becomes a gateway to a healthier community

More About Healthy Community Design

The way we design and build our communities affects our physical and mental health. When people can walk, bike or roll where they need to go because of supportive infrastructure — like connected, well-maintained sidewalks and bike-friendly routes — car traffic decreases, and that can improve air quality and respiratory health. When children live in homes that do not contain lead or asthma triggers, they are better able to grow and develop in a healthy environment.

We believe everyone deserves healthy communities. Those are communities where everyone has an affordable, safe home, access to safe and healthy food and decisionmakers include health and equity considerations when making transportation and land-use decisions.

APHA and partner resources

April 26, 2022 marks the 200th birthday of Frederick Law Olmsted — author, journalist, public official, city planner and father of American landscape architecture. His vision of public parks for all people — and their ability to strengthen communities and promote public well-being — are more important than ever. APHA believes in equitable access to parks and green spaces that is are welcoming to all. Learn more about how you can celebrate!
What can public health learn from parks and recreation efforts? (webinar)
Stories from the Field:
Unique Partnerships: Advancing healthy, active living in Austin, Texas (PDF)
Nurturing Home: Empowering a Lakota Community on Pine Ridge Reservation (PDF)
Integrating public health in metro area planning agencies (case studies, webinar)
Biking & Walking Benchmarking Report
Transportation and Health Tool