Healthy Cities and Smart Growth: Planning for Healthier Communities

On April 21-22, 2005, healthy cities and smart growth practitioners and advocates will convene in Berkeley, California, for a conference on the built environment and the public’s health and well-being. Participants will include policymakers, philanthropists, academics and experts in public health, community development, transportation, housing, the environment, demography, urban design and the non-profit sector.

Keynote speakers are Robert Garcia, Executive Director of the Center for Law in the Public Interest, a nationally recognized leader on healthy and safe parks and schools; Richard Jackson, MD, MPH, State Public Health Officer, California Department of Health Services; and State Senator Tom Torlakson (D-Antioch). Visit www.civicpartnerships.org for additional information about the conference.

Click here for specific policy recommendations in the Center’s concise four page policy brief on healthy children and healthy communities, and our recent article in the Urban Equity Symposium in the Fordham Urban Law Journal. Our article on healthy communities and legal service providers is forthcoming.

If current trends in obesity and inactivity continue, today’s youth will be the first generation in this nation’s history to face a shorter life expectancy than their parents. This health crisis costs the United States over $100 billion each year. Child obesity has more than tripled in three decades, and increased health risks have wiped out progress in other areas, according to the most recent annual report on U.S. child welfare from Duke University and the Foundation for Child Development. Rising obesity has “completely obscured all progress made in the health category, dragging it 17% below 1975 levels,” according to the foundation. Obesity-related complications such as diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular disease will result in today’s children living “two to five years less than they otherwise would,” according to a recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine by the University of Illinois.

Check the Center’s blog regularly for updates on the epidemic of inactivity and obesity.