APA Briefs Congress on Public Health Impacts of Sprawl

On October 2, 2003, APA's Policy Director Jeff Soule, FAICP participated in a congressional briefing to address the relationship between land use, transportation, and public health.

The event's host, the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI), frequently coordinates such events for congressional staff, federal officials, and organizations that share similar interests. The high turnout at this briefing was telling of the general interest level in the topic. Congressional staff, federal agency representatives, state and local government representatives, and nonprofit advocacy groups were among the attendees.

Click here to see panelists' presentations.

The briefing coincided with the release of a new study by Reid Ewing of the National Center for Smart Growth, University of Maryland, that is the first national research study to link sprawling areas with higher obesity rates.

September's special issues of the American Journal of Public Health and the American Journal of Health Promotion, which focused on the effects of the built environment on public health, also contributed to a surge of interest and increased attention to this topic.

Also notable is that APA's research department, with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has published preliminary survey results from their ongoing study linking planning and public health. In his remarks at the congressional briefing, Jeff Soule referenced various trends from APA's findings that lay out how public health issues are addressed and framed within the planning process in various jurisdictions.

The briefing panel, composed of public health experts and local planning professionals, discussed how public policy can influence and address the above phenomenon. Current research indicates that improvements in land use and community design, including transportation options that increase physical activity and reduce air pollution, could help moderate many chronic diseases such as diabetes, obesity, heart disease, asthma, and depression. Policymakers, therefore, face important decisions with regard to transportation, housing, and land use initiatives.

In general, panelists agreed that the planning process in community development needs to look at long-term implications of planning designs and should address neighborhoods' need for sidewalks, proximity of parks, recreational areas and schools, and accessible public transportation.

Although many community design and sprawl-related decisions take place on a small, local scale, there are federal implications associated with these decisions. On the flip side, federal legislation has the ability to profoundly influence some of these decisions.

Several pieces of federal legislation are particularly relevant. Reauthorization of the Transportation Equity Act (TEA-21) needs to incorporate and fully fund transportation enhancements, safe routes to schools, and accessible public transportation. The Urban Park and Recreation Recovery (UPARR) program needs to have funding restored in order to provide federal assistance to economically distressed urban communities whose recreation facilities are in need of rehabilitation.

Additionally, the availability of certain federal grant programs could provide an incentive for local implementation of planning for public health strategies. One example is the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program that provides low-income metropolitan communities with money to revitalize neighborhoods, expand affordable housing and economic opportunities, and improve community facilities and services to benefit low- and moderate-income persons within that area.

Finally, it is necessary to modernize planning statutes to revise outdated state enabling laws and provide economic efficiency, local control and new tools and technologies as they become available.