The built environment and health

The built environment through its form, layout and design has an impact on the health of individuals and populations. The health impacts of the built environment are firstly the direct physical impacts on health through polluted air and water, poorly ventilated and heated buildings and the hazards of road traffic. But there are also significant impacts on the wider determinants of health. These include many indirect social and behavioural effects: on the exercise we take and the people we meet; on access to housing, employment opportunities, health services and other facilities. This piece provides a brief overview of the connections between the built environment and health

Managing the Import and Use of Healthcare Technology in Sub-Saharan Africa

This Thesis investigates the import and use of healthcare technology into Sub-Saharan Africa. With the increasing range of equipment types present in the health sector, the effective management of technology is of growing importance if health services are to improve in developing countries. Yet this sector has been relatively neglected within the traditional technology transfer, management, and development literature. The activities and players involved in the healthcare technology sector are complex, thus an holistic healthcare technology package system is identified, and theoretically and practically assessed as a modelling framework. This tool is applied to provide detailed analysis in three case study countries over time - Zambia in 1990, Botswana in 1992, and Namibia in 1997, with a documented learning process. The key issue pursued is how to improve the sustainability of healthcare technology. This proves fundamentally to be a management issue, and five overarching key constraints emerge-: * the institutional framework available for delivering healthcare technology management throughout a country, * training personnel and developing a national technical management capacity; * sufficient allocation of financial resources; * technical support availability from the private sector, * the role played by external support agencies. These five issues are studied in detail with support from relevant literature. The research proves that it is necessary to approach the subject from three perspectives. Thus a Thesis framework is used which ensures that healthcare technology is analysed as a Technological Systems issue, an Institutional Organization issue, and a Development issue. The area of overlap between these perspectives is key to finding creative solutions for sustainability. The conclusions show that cross-denominational strategies will be essential between health service providers, the national support environment, donors agencies, the private sector, and the region. All institutions involved need to find ways to become 'learning organizations' in this field

Bringing public health into built environment education

This guide is aimed at all built environment educators, showing what the key issues are in terms of improving healthunderstanding in the built environment professions. It will explain the relevance, show how the built environment impacts on health and its implications for educationand provide examples of good practice in teaching.By making these connections, graduates should be emerging into the workplace with a good understanding of the healthimpacts of their professional work and be equipped with techniques and examples to help them deliver healthier places in the future.The guide draws on the work of the Education Network for Healthier Settlements, a group of built environmenteducators from the UK and beyond who are developing ways to reconnect health and the built environment in theprofessions

Understanding the role of universities in the European Healthy Cities Programme

The WHO Collaborating Centre is a founder member of HAVEN, a European consortium of universities and healthy cities set up to provide academic support to the European Healthy City Network (EHCN). In order to identify which ‘healthy city’ goals and activities have the most potential for support and collaboration, a survey was carried out across the whole network of 84 cities. It asked who their key partners were and what sort of knowledge and academic input they needed to enable them to best achieve the aims of the WHO Healthy Cities programme. The survey also explored existing connections with academia in order to identify what types of collaboration currently flourished

International perspectives on building capacity for planning and health

This paper looks at the integration of health into planning and planning curricula and what we have learnt from international practice in the context of the PLAN-ED (“Educating Planners for the New Challenges of Sustainability, Knowledge and Governance”) project involving staff from four planning schools in the EU and the USA. In Bristol, the project brought together researchers, stakeholders and practitioners from both health and planning, including from local authorities, NGOs and health services to consider how best to progress the capacity building agenda

Bringing the healthier places agenda into teaching and the architecture studios

It is widely accepted that climate change, obesity, community infrastructure, air quality and noise pollution are all linked to health risks. However, evidence also shows that each is impacted on by the form of the built environment, and as such, the built environment is seen as an important ‘wider determinant of health’. The professionals responsible for our built environment therefore need to understand the consequences of their actions on public health and be aware of their ability to influence the health and well being of the population. Consequently, educational institutions need to be equipped to deliver such health-aware planners, urban designers, architects, and landscape- and transport-professionals. This article reflects on initiatives at the University of the West of England to bring together educational practitioners to support the health agenda in built environment curricula and to introduce health into the architectural curriculum as a major driver for sustainable design