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Monitoring Healthy Growth: Community Design & Perception Baseline Indicators

This webinar will provide an overview of The Healthy Community Design (HCD) Baseline Project developed by Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health and published in the Canadian Journal of Public Health.

A strong relationship exists between health and community design. However, in many communities, there is a gap in available baseline data that supports measuring and monitoring healthy community design (HCD). To address this gap, the HCD Baseline Project aimed to collect and use local data to develop indicators that will facilitate applying a health and wellbeing lens to land use planning and growth decisions. The HCD Baseline Project established baseline indicators for three communities, including indicator data that measures physical community design features as well as survey data on self-reported behaviours and perceptions. Physical community design indicator data were mapped spatially for each community, including data related to neighbourhood design, transportation networks, natural environments, and food systems. Additionally, survey data collected from a Neighbourhood Design Survey provided information on residents’ perceptions of HCD as well as data on reported behaviour related to how residents travelled within their neighbourhood. The creation of a baseline will support ongoing monitoring to track progress of HCD priorities as communities grow. The combination of physical community design and survey data identified areas of strength and opportunity for each community. In collaboration with municipal partners, tailored recommendations were developed for each community.

Amanda Scales and Bo Cheyne, Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health

Jul 19, 2022 12:00 PM in Vancouver