Planning Health-Promoting Development: Creation and Assessment of an Evidence-Based Index in the Region of Peel, Canada

Jonathan Toshach Weyman, James R Dunn, Christine Gutmann, Bhavna Sivanand, Gayle Bursey and David L Mowat
Additional contact information
Jonathan Toshach Weyman: Centre for Research on Inner City Health, St. Michael's Hospital, 30 Bond Street, Toronto, ON M5B 1W8, Canada
James R Dunn: Department of Health, Aging and Society, McMaster University, Kenneth Taylor Hall, Room 230, 1280 Main Street West, Hamilton, ON L8S 4M4, Canada, and Centre for Research on Inner City Health, St. Michael's Hospital, 30 Bond Street, Toronto, ON M5B 1W8, Canada

Environment and Planning B, 2013, vol. 40, issue 4, 707-722

Abstract: There is mounting evidence of relationships between the built environment, health behaviours, and chronic disease. Collaborative intervention efforts aimed at improving sustainability and environmental planning are underway in many jurisdictions, but relatively few have focused on the rationale and evidence for health-promoting development. Given current rates of chronic diseases, such as diabetes, a collaborative effort between planning departments, public health professionals, and researchers was undertaken to create an evidence-based healthy development index aimed at encouraging health-promoting development in the municipality of the Region of Peel, ON, Canada. In this paper we present the review process used to establish prerequisite elements and measures in the index, and the spatial analytical methodology developed to assess these measures within existing neighbourhoods in our setting. The assessment process and results offer important insight into barriers in existing design standards, official plan policies, zoning by-laws, and technical requirements that limit health-promoting development and have hindered implementation of the index as a tool for planning policy. Our discussion highlights challenges that those seeking to undertake similar interventions in other rapidly developing suburban jurisdictions may encounter. Despite barriers to implementation of the index in the form originally intended, a variety of positive policy contributions have been made in municipal and provincial jurisdictions as a result of this work. Further study is needed to identify and address detailed barriers to policy implementation, and to document the longitudinal health impacts associated with this built environment intervention

Keywords: built environment; health; intervention; case study; geographic information systems; obesity; diabetes; active transportation; spatial analysis; health planning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/b39036 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envirb:v:40:y:2013:i:4:p:707-722

DOI: 10.1068/b39036

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment and Planning B
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().