Healthy Community Design Initiative: Recent Accomplishments

The Healthy Community Design Initiative, also known as the Built Environment and Health Initiative, is no longer a funded program and the information on this website is not being reviewed and updated on a regular basis.

Evaluation

• Funded the American Planning Association report Healthy Planning: An evaluation of comprehensive and sustainability plans addressing public health [PDF – 2.5 MB]. The report evaluates how 22 comprehensive and sustainability plans from around the country have addressed public health.
• Funded the Safe Routes to School (SRTS) National Partnership on an evaluation of SRTS coordinators in low-income schools around the country. The evaluation showed that a small salary that supports an SRTS coordinator enables the implementation of successful SRTS programs, increasing the number of children walking and biking to school in areas where fewer parental resources exist to build SRTS programs ( http://www.saferoutespartnership.org/media/file/
  Health_Evaluation_Feb_2010.pdf [PDF – 539 KB]).
• Assisted with the ongoing evaluation of the Nonmotorized Transportation Pilot Program, a Department of Transportation program that funds four communities to invest heavily in bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure (http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/environment/bicycle_pedestrian/ntpp/).
• Participating on the national review group for the U.S. Department of Transportation-funded National Center for Safe Routes to School (SRTS) to help them devise an approach to evaluating the national SRTS Program.

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