Integrating health into regional planning: Sketching a path forward

Incorporating health considerations into regional planning is crucial for realizing positive health outcomes in urban and rural regions alike. Regional transportation, land use, and air quality planning and analysis is undergirded by a myriad of models and data sources. Performance analyses are often conducted on model results to guide decision making and inform the public, but have not typically included health outcomes. This presentation will describe two recent efforts to integrate health and planning in the Sacramento region and the San Joaquin Valley (SJV), both in California. In both cases, analysis was hindered by differing geographic units employed in transportation and health analysis (Census tracts and zip code areas, respectively). In the SJV, health outcomes were not found to comport with measures of social vulnerability, presenting challenges for the interpretation of results but providing valuable insights for future research designs. The presentation will summarize lessons learned from these planning efforts and sketch a path towards closer integration of public health and regional planning with an eye towards data needs and analytical capabilities.

The presentations in this panel addresses specific efforts to infuse health into regional planning, providing participants with valuable learning outcomes. Specifically, after the presentation, participants will be able to:

- Evaluate how their existing data sources constrain or enable the integration of health perspectives into regional planning - Formulate updated data collection plans that facilitate such integration - Describe real-world efforts to integrate health and regional planning, recognize shortcomings with existing approaches, and formulate alternatives