Work Programme

Urban Environments and Health

The Public Health Advisory Committee (PHAC) has recently completed a project on urban environments and health in New Zealand. Its final report, Healthy Places, Healthy Lives, provides an evidence-based review of how the urban environment influences the health of communities.

Some of the greatest advances in the history of public health came from its influence on urban planning. However in recent decades the involvement of public health professionals in issues such as urban development, planning, and transport has diminished and there has emerged a range of health problems which are at least in part associated with how we live in our towns and cities today. Car dependency has contributed to physical inactivity, increasing levels of overweight and obesity and a rising incidence of illness and disease associated with this. In some areas air pollution is a problem and in other settlements access to basic goods and services to support healthy living is difficult. All too often it is people from disadvantaged backgrounds who suffer the greatest health impacts from poor urban environments and this can therefore exacerbate health inequalities. With 85% of New Zealanders now living in urban environments the issue is of major importance to the future prosperity of New Zealand.

Healthy Places, Healthy Lives is the PHAC’s final advice to the Minister of Health. It outlines the growing body of evidence on how the urban environment influences the health of communities, and describes a number of case studies that illustrate ways to design cities, towns, neighbourhoods and streets to promote health. Healthy Places, Healthy Lives also describes the leadership role that New Zealand’s health system can take to help shape urban form for improved health outcomes, and identifies specific areas where the health system can best add value in this endeavour.

In developing its advice, the PHAC used a broad definition of the urban environment, which includes cities, towns and smaller settlements, and identified the factors that contribute to health and wellbeing in these areas. It examined current policies and initiatives that shape urban form, and surveyed urban and transport planners about the extent to which they consider health in their work.

This project built upon the PHAC’s earlier work on Health Impact Assessment and on the environmental determinants of health, as well as links with the “Health is Everyone’s Business” report in the emphasis on cross-sectoral solutions, and on the identification of opportunities for the increased involvement of the health system in urban issues.



Page last updated: 29 April 2010