The built environment is an important source of some of the social determinants of health, including housing, clean air and water, and cooler temperatures.See footnote 1 Public health departments have a keen interest in those social determinants, but often relatively little authority over them. Some of the planning tools, above, can help with integrating public health priorities into housing, transportation, and other plans, but implementation is key for ensuring equitable distribution of resources among neighborhoods and residents.
This section focuses on implementation, particularly equitable implementation of built environment tools such as tree planting, stormwater harvesting, and cool roof incentives. Cities must figure out how to not only implement climate- and health-smart policies, but also ensure that the effects are equitably distributed. Particularly with incentive-based programs such as rebates or giveaways that are given out on a first-come, first-serve basis, low-income residents often are not the first to the table and are therefore less able to take advantage of those programs. Rebates can be particularly hard to make equitable because property owners must have the money for an upfront investment, making them sometimes inaccessible for low-income residents.See footnote 2 The case studies below describe several programs that devised strategies to reverse that usual trend and get more resources into the communities with the most need.
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Endnotes:
1. Social Determinants of Health, Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (2020), View Source | Back to contentBack to content
2. Michael Isaac Stein, Energy Efficiency Is Leaving Low-Income Americans Behind, Grist (February 21, 2018), View Source. | Back to contentBack to content
3. For a fuller discussion, please see the Natural Resilience Chapter of this toolkit View Source. | Back to contentBack to content
4. For a fuller discussion, please see the Affordable Housing Chapter of this toolkit View Source. | Back to contentBack to content
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