A Walkable Urban Environment to Prevent Chronic Diseases and Improve Wellbeing, an Experience of Urban Health in the Local Health Unit Roma 1

Cities play a vital role in promoting health, as most of the world’s population lives in urban areas. Urbanization and city planning are both factors that must be considered to improve the health of communities. Walkability is a measure of how friendly an area is to walk. The Walking Suitability Index of the Territory (T-WSI) measures the pedestrian viability of the streets of a environmental islands. It includes 12 indicators, distributed into four categories: practicability, safety, urbanity, pleasantness. The goal of this study is to establish a model of connection between universities, local authorities, and health institutions to improve the walkability of urban areas. Five Environmental Islands were identified in the Municipality of Roma Capitale. First step concerned multidisciplinary training, sharing the goal between professionals in both the health and non-health fields. The theoretical acquisition, for Public Health personnel, on the use of the “walkability” assessment tool T-WSI was concretized by applying the assessment in training inspections. The on-site measurements showed that the main critical issues in terms of unfavorable factors for walking are the obstacles on the sidewalks, concerning the safety of pedestrian crossings and protection from vehicular speed. Measurement was associated with a characterization based on census data, obtained from satellite imagery. It is important to develop tools that are easy to apply and that can be easily used, also by health personnel. This is necessary in the light of recent developments in the Italian regulatory framework, and international guidelines, toward a growing integration of professional skills with the common objective of Urban Health. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG