The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA

Abstract #63307

Jason Corburn, PhD, Urban Public Health, Hunter College, 425 E. 25th St. rm724west, New York, NY 10010, 212-481-5262, jcorburn@hunter.cuny.edu

This paper offers a framework for incorporating the social determinants of health into the environmental planning process. Currently, environmental planning is largely driven by environmental impact assessments (EIA) which are used to evaluate the environmental and human health impacts of land use decisions. However, the EIA fails to consider how social determinants of health might interact with more conventional environmental and land use impacts. One result is that urban and environmental planning fails to acknowledge and address existing health disparities during the project review stage. Yet, recognizing the health impacts of economic, political, and environmental policies and conditions has far reaching implications for the way planners make decisions about development projects. Using detailed case studies of state and federal EIAs, this paper highlights how the review process discounts social determinants of health and how the EIA process fails to consider human health impacts more generally. The case-study analysis focuses on social determinants such as access to health services, education, employment & working conditions, income & income distribution, housing, food security, and social networks. The paper then offers an alternative environmental assessment framework that combines both social determinants of health and hazardous environmental exposures using a multi-level population health approach. The framework builds from work on human health impact analysis, Healthy Communities, and community-based research partnerships. The paper calls on urban planners and public health professionals to expand interdisciplinary collaborations in order to meaningfully incorporate social determinants of health into the urban planning process.

Learning Objectives:

• Highlight the relationships between the environmental impact assessment(EIA) process and public health.
• List the ways current EIA practice fails to consider both human health impacts and the social determinants of health.
• Discuss and consider an alternative environmental planning framework that reviews the environmental and social determinants of health.
• Highlight the challenges planners and public health professionals face when trying to incorporate a population health perspective into urban environmental planning.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.