Public Health Planning Tools

For purposes of this chapter, planning tools come in two different types. First, public health agencies can address climate and health challenges through engaging in their own planning processes, designed to identify populations and communities that are on the front line of climate impacts and most in need of interventions, in order to ensure that any strategies employed are equitable both in outcomes and in process. This type of planning can consist of literally mapping a community’s sensitivities to climate change, using physical data such as temperatures; demographic data including age, income level, and race; and health data including rates of chronic diseases.^{See footnote 1} By mapping this data, local communities can identify the frontline communities for various health impacts and better target efforts to ensure equitable outcomes. These public health planning tools are discussed in more detail in the Public Health Tools section of this chapter. Community-based organizations can participate in or even lead these processes, given that many of those organizations are already well familiar with which community members are most disadvantaged.

Second, public health agencies and advocates can participate in planning processes that other agencies are managing: for example, comprehensive planning and transportation planning, among others. Bringing a public health perspective to those planning processes helps to ensure that the health consequences are fully integrated into decisionmaking and that equity is fully incorporated in addition to the primary mission of that agency.^{See footnote 2} Health impact assessments (HIAs) are a key tool for public health agencies to participate in other agencies’ planning processes. HIAs allow a community to fully assess the impacts of a particular built environment project on the health of the people living and working in the project’s neighborhood and surrounding area, as well as to recommend changes to that project in order to minimize negative health impacts and maximize positive health impacts.^{See footnote 3} Oregon Health Authority’s HIA, discussed below, enabled the agency to identify the positive climate and health effects of a particular transportation project and even to quantify the positive health effects that would result from increased active transportation capacity, for example.^{See footnote 4} This analysis can help make the case to spend infrastructure or other funds in a climate-smart way and ensure that frontline communities achieve better health outcomes. Fully engaging communities in those planning processes also ensures that the entire project, from concept to design to construction and beyond, fully considers community priorities and knowledge, strengthening the end result.

Public health agencies’ coordinating with other agencies to consider health outcomes can be both time-consuming and challenging. Partner agencies may sometimes be reluctant to engage in a process that may add planning time to an already lengthy review and approval process, and agencies can sometimes be uncomfortable with intrusions into areas that are under their jurisdiction. Both agencies will need to adjust to the sometimes-increased time that full community engagement takes. In places where those barriers have been overcome, however, by developing common goals to work toward, ultimately taking the public health equity perspective can result in both better health outcomes and in strong and more enduring support for climate-beneficial policies such as active transportation or clean energy.

Considerations of Planning Tools for Public Health

Lessons Learned

• Regional collaboration, in addition to collaboration across sectors, can increase capacity and increase the reach of a particular policy or strategy.
• By incorporating health effects as well as traditional environmental and climate impacts, more-expensive practices can have a more positive cost-benefit balance than they would otherwise, increasing the likelihood that those practices will be accepted.