Grantee Publication: Housing and Planning for a Healthy Public: Land Use, Design and Development to Promote Health Equity

Connecticut has some of the nation’s most compelling racial and ethnic inequities in health outcomes. Designing, planning, and developing healthy, affordable homes in neighborhoods of opportunity can dramatically improve health outcomes and promote health equity – all while boosting the local economy. But improving the built environment requires strategic collaborations between local public health departments, town planners, municipal leaders and other town officials, state policymakers and agencies, developers and builders, and citizens. This policy brief makes the case for formalizing planning-public health partnerships at the municipal level in Connecticut and identifies potential policy strategies that such partnerships could advance to improve conditions to promote health and health equity – one Connecticut community at a time. (author introduction)