The buildings we live in, the parks we play in, the streets we walk on, and the pipes that run under our homes are all components of the built environment that influence our health outcomes. Our neighborhoods, our incomes, and our race often determine the quality of the built environment around us.

Communities of color and neighborhoods with higher levels of poverty are most likely to experience barriers to accessing quality housing, transportation, parks, recreation facilities, and other health-promoting aspects of the built environment because of systemic disinvestment, racist policies, and a lack of resident input in local decisionmaking. These barriers can lead to health inequities between white communities and communities of color, as well as between neighborhoods with higher incomes and those with lower incomes (PDF).

To ensure all residents have equitable opportunities to achieve good health, municipal leaders and nonprofit partners could consider reexamining and applying a health equity lens to the systems and policies affecting their communities’ built environments. Applying a health equity lens would require all community stakeholders—from municipal staff to public health officials, to community organizations and advocates—to pursue antiracist planning principles and processes and make targeted investments in underserved neighborhoods so residents have access to the same healthy environments as their more-resourced counterparts.

For a new brief, we spoke with municipal staff, health care departments, and local health advocacy organizations in 18 small- and medium-size municipalities to understand how they are implementing built-environment policies, plans, and programs to improve health outcomes and increase health equity. Here are four strategies these municipalities are taking.

  1. Advancing inclusive resident engagement and collaboration
  2. Prioritizing resources for communities experiencing health inequities
  3. Formalizing staffing roles and structures and training staff to listen
  4. Acknowledging and understanding how residents interact with the built environment and mitigating potential adverse effects of built-environment interventions

Read the full article about advancing health equity by Emily Bramhall and Joseph Schilling at Urban Institute.