Health Impact Assessment for Improved Community Design

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.

FOA Number: Funding Opportunity Number:CDC-RFA-EH14-1407
National Center for Environmental Health
Current Closing Date for Applications: Apr 28, 2014

Executive Summary:
The Healthy Community Design Initiative (HCDI) within CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health is dedicated to understanding and improving the relationship between community design and public health. HCDI focuses its efforts on two major components of the built environment: transportation systems and land-use. The design of these sectors affect, through environmental and behavioral intermediaries, injuries, physical activity, and health outcomes related to pollution exposure. The decisions that are made regarding community design impact health, but often health considerations are not incorporated into community design policies and programs. HCDI seeks to promote an evidence-based approach toward community design decision-making through three major activities: first, improving surveillance related to community design so communities have reliable local data they can use; second, encouraging Health Impact Assessments (HIAs) of policies, programs, and projects that will affect community design; and finally, supporting education and communication. This FOA fits into HCDI’s activities by building capacity for HIA. Health Impact Assessment (HIA) is commonly defined as “a systematic process that uses an array of data sources and analytic methods and considers input from stakeholders to determine the potential effects of a proposed policy, plan, program, or project on the health of a population and the distribution of those effects within the population. HIA provides recommendations on monitoring and managing those effects” (National Research Council, 2011). HIA can help decision-makers avoid adverse health consequences and costs and improve health. HIA may also help reduce environmental injustices by characterizing opportunities to improve the relationship between affected vulnerable groups and the policy or project.

Summary Paragraph:
The purpose of this funding opportunity announcement is to increase the capacity of public health departments to include health considerations in transportation and land use planning decisions, and to expand the scope of health impacts considered when making decisions that impact community design. This FOA will fund recipients to conduct activities and achieve similar outcomes of the existing FOA EH11-1104 awardees. The recipient’s strategies and activities will be in agreement with the non-research goals of the National Research Council’s recommended strategies to advance the practice of HIA. Expected project period outcomes include increased awareness of the linkages between community design and health, enhanced capacity of HIA practitioners, increased knowledge of decision makers and increased community collaboration to improve the built environment.

CDC-RFA-EH14-1407 “Health Impact Assessment for Improved Community Design” was published on Grants.gov on February 26, 2014.

The application deadline date is April 28, 2014.

To Access the Announcement & Application Package:

1. Go to: http://www.grants.gov
2. Select: “Applicant” from the menu
3. Select: “Apply for Grants”
4. Select: “Step 1: Download a Grant Application Package”
5. Type: The Funding Opportunity Number formatted as: CDC-RFA-EH14-1407 (must type “CDC-RFA-“)

To read examples of projects by awardees funded for the period of September 2011- August 2014, go to https://www.cdc.gov/healthyplaces/stories/default.htm.

Questions and Answers:

To view frequently asked questions and answers regarding the new Funding Opportunity Announcement, click here [PDF – 132 KB].