title: What role for environmental public health practitioners in promoting healthy built environments?
abstract: Spaces that encourage better health are increasingly seen as key to reducing the burden of chronic disease: many larger Canadian public health departments now include built environment (BE) teams, which work with municipalities and land use planners to promote and/or require the development of health-encouraging spaces. In many public health agencies, it is environmental health practitioners who have assumed the new healthy BE role, but at what cost to existing mandates? We argue that reinventing roles to increase BE capacities within environmental health practice would reinforce health protection mandates while building capacity in chronic disease prevention. Significant expansion into the design of healthier built environments may require some reallocation of resources. However, we anticipate that healthier built environments will reduce threats to health and so lessen the need for conventional health protection, while encouraging activities and behaviours that lead to greater population wellness.
authors.affiliation: Environmental Health Services, BC Centre for Disease Control, 0073-655 West 12th Avenue, Vancouver, BC, V5Z 4R4, Canada. karen.rideout@bccdc.ca.
authors.forename: Karen
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Rideout
authors.affiliation: Environmental Health Services, BC Centre for Disease Control, 0073-655 West 12th Avenue, Vancouver, BC, V5Z 4R4, Canada.|National Collaborating Centre for Environmental Health, Vancouver, BC, Canada.|School of Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
authors.forename: Tom
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kosatsky
authors.affiliation: Dr. Karen Lee Health + Built Environment + Social Determinants Consulting, New York, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Karen K
authors.initials: KK
authors.lastname: Lee
mesh_terms: D001955:British Columbia; D057191:Capacity Building; D002908:Chronic Disease / Q000517:prevention & control; D002958:City Planning / Q000458:organization & administration*; D004779:Environment Design / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006293:Health Promotion / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006801:Humans; D009519:New York City; D024382:Professional Role; D015980:Public Health Practice