Re: [H+T--Friends] New report: Statewide Transportation Planning for Healthy Communities

Hi Eloisa (and Bill): Thanks for circulation this report led by Bill Lyons at Volpe whom is copied. Foremost, It is great to see this type of material getting circulated within the format of a resource document. There are about 4-5 regions noted as case studies. Over the past 10 years it has been interesting to see this work emerge and contrasts that exist between the different approaches in each location as they make efforts to develop methods to quantify the health impacts of transportation and land use actions. Since we have been working on many of these projects in one way or another I wanted to offer some thoughts and a few clarifications to assist readers to make the most of your product. The earliest effort was with King County which is in the Seattle Region – all of that work was led by King county and not for the MPO but it is good to see it noted as PSRC (the MPO) was engaged and used some of the work. HealthScape and The LUTAQH study (both efforts noted noted were done by Urban Design 4 Health, Inc (formerly Lawrence Frank and Company) and all materials and documentation for that work is located at www.ud4h.com. All of the reports and documents (about 10 or so) make this clear. The USDOT report however lists these efforts as being done by an entirely different organization (and in another country). The end result is users of the report are directed to an entity that had nothing to do with the project and no material to support those that want to learn more about these projects. Can this be corrected to send list Urban Design 4 Health, Inc as the correct authors of this work and to note the web address? That was the first generation of an evidence based scenario planning health impact assessment tool and leveraged data from a large National Institute of Health Study (conducted in partnership co led by Dr. Jim Sallis, Brian Saelens, and myself (see www.nqls.org). The analysis behind some of this work is documented in the JAPA publication "Many Pathways from Land Use to Health" that I have attached. It used Sacramento Council of Government's (SACOG's) I-PLACES scenario planning software platform and was performed through a partnership between UD4H and SACOG for King County. It was also nice to see the healthy communities Atlas Urban Design 4 Health, Inc. (UD4H) led and developed for the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) listed. That was through what I think was the largest ARRA grant awarded about 5 years ago from the CDC. However, the report makes no mention of one of the most advanced and complex SCENARIO planning software tools (uses Community Viz) developed at that time – this work leveraged about $5 million in NIH funding with data collection on parks, food outlets, sidewalks, and employed a methodology that was recently vetted and approved by a technical advisory committee comprised of experts from RAND, UCLA, UC Berkeley, the CDC and others. It seems a shame to have the federal government spend so much money on something and have it completely missed in the review within an area of work where so little work has been done and where so much need and demand exists. It was one of the largest budgeted items from that project. UD4H is using this same methodology developed for San Diego to create another evidence based HIA tool for the state of California working with the California Strategic Growth Council, The Governor's Office of Policy Research, Sacramento Council of Governments, Southern California Association of Governments, and others in partnership with Calthorpe Associates and its very advanced Urban Footprint software tool. This new project uses an appx 50,000 person California Health Interview Survey and similar size Calif Household Travel Survey tied to a detailed built environment grid surface for its analytical engines. Thanks for all of the good work and effort to document what is happening in this rapidly growing area of research and tool development and for amending the report to allow those interested in it to know where to go to find out more about these projects. Sincerely, Lawrence D. Frank, President Urban Design 4 health Inc. (UD4H) www.ud4h.com 1-604-738-1588 / 1-604-290-4260 From: Eloisa Raynault <eloisaraynault@gmail.com<mailto:eloisaraynault@gmail.com>> Reply-To: TRB Health and Transportation <h+t--friends@chrispy.net<mailto:h+t--friends@chrispy.net>> Date: Monday, 18 August, 2014 4:07 PM To: "h+t--friends@chrispy.net<mailto:h+t--friends@chrispy.net>" <h+t--friends@chrispy.net<mailto:h+t--friends@chrispy.net>> Subject: [H+T--Friends] New report: Statewide Transportation Planning for Healthy Communities This new report may be of interest. The Federal Highway Administration has released a report that presents a model for state departments of transportation to integrate public health considerations into their transportation planning and decision making. The FHWA report, “Statewide Transportation Planning for Healthy Communities,” was developed for FHWA by the USDOT Volpe Center and includes case studies on the California, Iowa, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and North Carolina DOTs and their collaboration with public health partners. It also provides a synthesis of trends, lessons learned, and opportunities for DOT peer agencies and their partners to consider health in transportation planning and programming. The report complements the earlier FHWA report by the same team, “Metropolitan Area Transportation Planning for Healthy Communities,” which evaluates how several MPOs and their partners are collaborating to bring broad consideration of public health into their planning. Both reports and corresponding one-page summaries can be found on the health page of the FHWA/FTA Transportation Planning Capacity Building Program at: http://www.planning.dot.gov/healthy_communities_desc.asp We encourage you to disseminate the report through your website, newsletter, or networks as you deem appropriate. Please feel free to make use the following language as useful: * Announcements in newsletters, etc. about the new report: The Federal Highway Administration has released a report that presents a model for state departments of transportation to integrate public health considerations into their transportation planning and decision making. The white paper, and a previous, complementary white paper about the metropolitan area planning process, are available from the FHWA/FTA Transportation Planning Capacity building program:http://www.planning.dot.gov/healthy_communities_desc.asp * Website links to the health reports: The Federal Highway Administration has developed two reports that present models for state departments of transportation and metropolitan planning organizations to integrate public health considerations into their transportation planning and decision making. Both reports and corresponding one-page summaries can be found on the health landing page of the FHWA/FTA Transportation Planning Capacity Building Program: http://www.planning.dot.gov/healthy_communities_desc.asp Please contact FHWA project manager Fred Bowers with any questions or comments about the reports (Frederick.Bowers@dot.gov<mailto:Frederick.Bowers@dot.gov>).