title: Building healthy communities: establishing health and wellness metrics for use within the real estate industry.
abstract: It is increasingly well recognized that the design and operation of the communities in which people live, work, learn, and play significantly influence their health. However, within the real estate industry, the health impacts of transportation, community development, and other construction projects, both positive and negative, continue to operate largely as economic externalities: unmeasured, unregulated, and for the most part unconsidered. This lack of transparency limits communities' ability to efficiently advocate for real estate investment that best promotes their health and well-being. It also limits market incentives for innovation within the real estate industry by making it more difficult for developers that successfully target health behaviors and outcomes in their projects to differentiate themselves competitively. In this article we outline the need for actionable, community-relevant, practical, and valuable metrics jointly developed by the health care and real estate sectors to better evaluate and optimize the "performance" of real estate development projects from a population health perspective. Potential templates for implementation, including the successful introduction of sustainability metrics by the green building movement, and preliminary data from selected case-study projects are also discussed.
authors.affiliation: Matthew J. Trowbridge (mtrowbridge@virginia.edu) is an associate professor in emergency medicine and public health sciences at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, in Charlottesville.
authors.forename: Matthew J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Trowbridge
authors.affiliation: Sarah Gauche Pickell is director of communications and development at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia.
authors.forename: Sarah Gauche
authors.initials: SG
authors.lastname: Pickell
authors.affiliation: Christopher R. Pyke is the vice president of research at the US Green Building Council, in Washington, D.C.
authors.forename: Christopher R
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: Pyke
authors.affiliation: Douglas P. Jutte is an associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and executive director of the Build Healthy Places Network, in San Francisco.
authors.forename: Douglas P
authors.initials: DP
authors.lastname: Jutte
mesh_terms: D004779:Environment Design; D004782:Environmental Health; D006293:Health Promotion / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006801:Humans; D011634:Public Health; D055818:Public-Private Sector Partnerships; D012922:Social Change; D064890:Social Determinants of Health; D014481:United States
keywords: Determinants Of Health; Environmental Health; Health Promotion/Disease Prevention; Information Technology; Public Health