Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Relationships between the physical environment in which people live and their health and well being. How the built environment affects physical activity, obesity, exposure to pathogens and toxins, health status, mental health, and risk of illness and injury. How urban form, physical infrastructure, and landscape and building design can promote health. Students with credit for HSCI 309 may not complete this course for credit

COURSE DETAILS:

Course Description: This course will explore the interconnections between planning and public health, and equip students with skills and experiences to plan healthy communities. The planning and public health disciplines emerged together with the common goal of preventing infectious disease outbreaks. Since that time, the disciplines diverged; public health following a clinical model and planning focusing on urban design and physical form. However, as the intimate connections between the built environment and disease continue to surface, the planning and public health fields have begun to converge once again. This course is organized in 4 units: (1) planning and public health foundations; (2) natural and built environments; (3) vulnerable populations and health disparities; and (4) integration and health policy.

This course is run as a CityStudio partner course (http://citystudiovancouver.com/).

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

Learning Objectives:                        
1) Foundational Knowledge. To understand public health and planning history, evolution and significant movements to the present, and historical and current theories on the relationship between the built environment and public health.
2) Application. To identify contemporary features of the built environment such as patterns of development, parks, public works projects, houses, and transportation systems that reflect past efforts to influence health, and use methods developed by architects, urban planners, public health professionals, and sociologists to address current health impacts of the built environment.
3) Human Dimensions. To learn about oneself and the context in which others operate to better integrate that understanding when evaluating differing built environments, socioeconomic positions, social and cultural backgrounds, and health status.
4) Integration and Communication. To develop skills to identify studies and engage communities, critique methods and findings, and apply lessons from planning and public health research to current and future problems. Integrate current evidence regarding the impacts of the built environment on health with information and perspectives from other courses and/or personal experiences.

Some offerings of this course may be CityStudio partner courses. 

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING: