Call for Papers: Community Development Approaches to Public Health

Posted by on October 12, 2009

CALL FOR PAPERS
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT: JOURNAL OF THE COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT SOCIETY

SPECIAL ISSUE ON COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT APPROACHES TO IMPROVING PUBLIC HEALTH

A special issue of Community Development: Journal of the Community Development Society is being organized to highlight papers that describe, analyze, and interpret innovative community development  strategies to create healthier environments and improve public health.  Across America, it has become clear that ill-considered land use, economic development and redevelopment planning decisions are having an  adverse effect on public health. Land use planning, economic development and redevelopment have long operated in isolation from public health, and as a result, we allowed have places to be built where the following conditions are common:

* Communities built exclusively for auto-based transportation where walking and cycling to school, to work, or for pleasure is difficult and often dangerous;
* sprawling low density places, where mixed use is discouraged and grocery stores and jobs are far from residential areas;
* Places in which parks and playgrounds are rare and often non-existent;
* Schools and houses that are built near major sources of pollution;
* School yards and indoor recreational facilities which stay locked and unavailable for community use on evening and weekends.

Such unhealthy environments have contributed to the dramatic increase in chronic diseases as obesity, diabetes and asthma. In low income neighborhoods, where these environmental problems are more pronounced, residents live markedly shorter and unhealthier lives than those in well to do neighborhoods.

In face of this reality, the disconnected fields of public health, city planning and economic development and redevelopment are beginning to work together more effectively to build healthier environments. Local governments, private developers, and community groups are creating new policies, programs, and developments that improve community health outcomes–by ensuring that farmers’ markets and neighborhood grocery stores are supported, for instance, or by promoting sidewalks, parks and other environmental components that encourage physical activity.

Getting these public agencies and private entities to re-imagine their missions and to work together, and to do so effectively, to build healthier and more sustainable places, is a task that requires a great deal of tenacity, creativity, and effort. It also takes continual learning and tactical innovation.

This special issue of … will examine the efforts of these community development approaches to building healthier environments. We invite the submission of papers that examine innovative techniques and approaches used by local governments, community advocates, and the private sector to improve food access, promote mixed use development, increase physical activity opportunities, and ameliorate air quality.

Persons interested in contributing a paper to this issue should send a 250 word abstract to Robert Ogilvie, via e-mail: rogilvie@phlpnet.org indicating the specific topic, methodology or approach, and relevance for the Community Development Approaches to Improving Public Health issue to the Guest Editor by October 31, 2009.